Platinum and Chocolate
by Liker-tequila
Summary: When fatigue makes you to peel your skin, the salvation comes. In detestation and fury. In chronic anger. In recurring pain. And in awareness: any salvation is temporary. This story was translated from Russian. Enjoy it. Author: Nastya Chatskaya
1. Prologue

"Get out of my way, Granger."

He looked through her and it was annoying.

It seemed that his glare was pricking her bowels with an icy crumb. The peremptory notes in his rough voice with its lead weight seemed to be pushed her away. It almost nailed her down the coach's wall, forcing her to feel her vertebra rested again the firm protrusion of window frame. It was all for to let Malfoy pass by and to avoid contact with him and his repulsive cold eyes.

And of course. He made a face with disgust.

 _It's natural._ What else should she expect from him...

Hermione made some inarticulate sound, noticing by the edge of her eyes the approaching company of five-year Gryffindor girls, chattering among themselves enthusiastically. She didn't want another scene with this vain despot. That was all she need - to pay extra attention to this little detail. That's why she only hissed:

"Go where you wanted to go, Malfoy."

A few moments he was looking somewhere at her nose, drilling an empty hole in her skin with the same empty glare. And only his arrogantly raised chin seemed to imply that he was thinking about her words.

To be honest, she wasn't interested in it at all. She only stood, snuggling her back up the wall, and felt an increasing itch of irritation under her fingernails from this position.

And also because of smooth train's rocking fastened a sharp corner of a frame somewhere under her shovel.

 _Get out, for Merlin's sake._

Meanwhile, her brain noted with some out-of-body slowness that Malfoy became even taller than last year. He towered over her already on ten inches. His hair fell on his forehead, barely touching his dark eyebrows. Earlier, his locks were much longer, but she had to admit that his new hairstyle was more suit, marking out his high cheekbones and thin nose. Hermione noted unwittingly that now Malfoy can't comb it back so that his hair didn't cover his face, because it was too short for this. She wanted to laugh gloatingly. She felt herself foolish immediately.

Among other things, this person caused an unpleasant aching feeling in her stomach. She was desirable to put two fingers into her mouth from that, or to become invisible for that he finally stopped to play his squeamish looks.

Meanwhile, Malfoy passed by her without even turning his head. He just twisted his damn lips again.

Hermione repeated this motion against her will, staring at his profile, and in a second she was already scudding along the coach to the opposite direction from Malfoy side, holding on to the walls and grabbing the handles of glass doors.

 _Irritation_.

Every damn collision with damn Malfoy caused a _damn annoyance_ in her. The presence of this buzzing feeling awakened desire to dig her fingers into her palms and to tear it to the meat.

She didn't like unreasonable anger.

Very seldom she allowed to take her emotions under control over the restrained and trained severity, that she cultivated in herself for eighteen years. And this wit is not worth to break her _rules_. He's worthless.

So she needs to calm down.

Breath in - breath out.

She rushed in the compartment, slapping the door so loud that the clang rang in her ears.

 _Everything is fine._

Her hair whipped her on her cheeks when Hermione abruptly turned to the frozen Ron and Harry. Redheaded didn't even have time to carry a paper glass to his mouth, slightly crumpled with his strong hands, and stopped his attempts to push fawning Crookshanks away from his foot. He looked over with Harry, who only raised his eyebrows and put the Prophet on the table.

"Did something... happen?" he watched Hermione touched down the opposite seat (Ron slightly drew his neck, leaving his juice constrained) and covered her eyes. The cat slid on her knees, and she tunneled her fingers in its bushy hair.

"Nothing worth someone's attention," Hermione touched the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue. And then she snorted and stared at the landscape passing by outside the window. Or rather at the dull glass, because her pupils were frozen.

When the dusk was growing, it calmed her down a little: the light became softer and more subdued. Bulbs began to light in the train, and the atmosphere became warmer, more comfortable. The Express was soon to arrive to Hogwarts.

"You look so... angry," Ron murmured.

His voice was always a little anxious and insecure. It wasn't necessary to turn away from the window to see what emotions were expressed on his freckled face. Ridiculously tender as a girl has. His frowning forehead, partially hidden under his red bangs, and a tense chin line.

"During the summer I have weaned from these... reptiles," Hermione muttered, clenching her lips. However, the irritation slowly released her. Malfoy's cold glance, touched her in the corridor, gradually disappeared from her consciousness, replaced the native eyes of her friends.

Damn him.

"Have you met someone from Slytherin?"

They are very shrewd.

"There was Malfoy," Hermione raised her chin in usual way, looking at the boys.

And suddenly.

She noted to herself with great pleasure, as they matured in a few months.

From this thought her lips stretched in an unwitting and unexpected smile. Seeing her reaction, Ron sighed in relief, though this hateful name forced him to strain for a second.

"It's good that I wasn't there. I would... "

"Don't talk nonsense, Ronald. All that we need is fighting in the train. I'm seriously. This is not the beginning of the year, we should think about it now," she turned her look to Harry keeping silence, "Not after what was in the past... Actually, you know. I've told you, and more than once."

For a few seconds the silence hung in the compartment. Weasley scratched his crown. Then his ears and cheeks, and after he shrugged his shoulders cheerfully:

"They have reconciled everything, right? Dumbledore and McGonagall, six months ago. We can relax now."

Hermione snorted, returning to the moss of the green hills and the mirrored river surface, in that reflected the setting sun.

The headmaster and the heads of houses invested their quantities that the students could return to Hogwarts after Christmas. And most of them really came back. After Harry's victory over Voldemort, passed more than half a year. Winter, spring and whole summer have passed. But no one wanted to talk about it. Therefore she shook her head, taking a good look at the boundary of an uneven horizon and a bright sky with torn snow-white clouds. There darken dense rows of trees.

Hermione remembered their rambles to the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid. It was gloomy, scary and... _forbidden_.

And what brings this year?

This question hanging in her head with the unfolding rumble. Her fingertips tunneled deeper in the Crookshanks soft hair. She felt a strange, slightly overpowering feeling in her chest.

Foretaste... New school year. The last one. And then.

She had no prediction.

"What about Malfoy, I... "

"Ron, that's enough," Hermione frowned strictly, turning her head.

"Not always he will get away with everything!" there was no limit to his righteous indignation, "Harry, tell her!"

Harry answered something indistinct.

Hermione didn't hear it, but she didn't ask again. There was a strange calm on her shoulders, mixed with a light and pleasant excitement. So it was always. It remained about two hours of the way to Hogwarts, this native stone lump, piercing sky with its peaks of towers. Something told her that this school year would be different from the six that were left behind.

Crookshanks purred and jumped off her knees.

It was the time to wear school uniform.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1.

Draco Malfoy is the damn school prefect among boys. Drop dead!

Hermione looked at McGonagall as if she had seen the professor for the first time. Or rather, it was like her neck was struck by something heavy. Something iron. Is this the reason of this ridiculous... fear?

Very funny.

"It's not possible," she barely pronounced with her lips.

But apparently, she said it not enough quiet, because her words didn't escape from sensitive Minerva's ears, who immediately raised her eyes in surprise.

"What is not possible, Miss Granger?" her voice sounded calm.

As if nothing special happened.

As if it's not Hermione with the damn Malfoy will share a common living room in the Prefect's tower! Her lips clenched by itself, while McGonagall quietly continued to pontificate the obvious things:

"At the beginning of each school year, the headmaster chooses the prefects among girls and boys, about what you are well aware of. You have given your consent to join this post.

She gave her consent.

Gosh, of course, she gave her consent! Hermione snarled it to herself, overcoming the desire to grasp her shoulders tightly with her hands and to pity herself.

She was privileged to represent the female half of the school.

She has got the long-awaited prefect badge. Merlin, she's been waiting all her life when she's got a chance to be in this position! And now...

Now Malfoy is going to break all her plans. He will destroy her dream to become the best one. He had already done it, trying to destroy her carefully thought-out world with his disgusting behavior. And for this he doesn't even need to be in the same room with her.

If Malfoy could be squeezed, Hogwarts would have choked in a sea of vanity and almost painful, disgusting self-confidence.

Hermione's lips formed as if she wanted to say something, but she couldn't force herself to utter a word. In the end she closed her eyes and slowly made a gasp through her mouth. She needs to pull herself together. The professor finally turned away a parchment and looked straight at Hermione.

A few seconds she was silent, and then she uttered, and her voice sounded much quieter:

"I believe you are acquainted with the situation of Draco Malfoy."

"Of course," the girl hissed and looked down.

It was hard to pass this fact off.

The Prophet recently turned its attention from Malfoy family to the winners' discussion about Bry broomsticks and its high-speed flights. And that is because the last events, where Malfoy family was implicated, forced all magical England to lick the bones each of them to the state of polished radiance. And even Skeeter had nothing to say after Lucius death.

After eighteen extensive articles.

Including those that crowned the front pages, and those that were published on Sundays in the Daily Prophet.

Hermione didn't read the press, actually she didn't read nothing at all concerning this family. The accident, after that Narcissa Malfoy was rumored to be out of her own. Dead Lucius, who after the Dark Lord's defeat summoned like-minded people and slaughtered the mudblood families of wizards as if they were cattle. It was of little interest to her, also as Draco Malfoy, who had changed his aristocratic pallor to painful pallor.

This all. Didn't concern. Her.

Moreover, the Ministry managed to stop all this obscene lawlessness. And it was possible to remember calmly that Malfoys are arrogant Slytherins, at the first place.

Or what's left of them.

Serves them right. Pity was irrelevant.

Hostility was simple, but capacious word. It meant the situation between the faculties of Gryffindor and Slytherin during all school life. Habitual, chronic, sometimes ridiculously predictable. It divided the relationships among Griffindor and Slytherin students on clear borders, bringing their communication to the necessary minimum. But even it was possible for everyone to turn a blind eye to it.

There was another reason.

The fact that boiled between Malfoys and representatives of families such as Granger, was called otherwise. And was of a different nature. Detestation.

Fiery. Prolonged. Thick, like syrup. Damn it. It was eternal detestation, built by clashes of past years. And over the years it only roused on a slow, but not less burning fire.

"Does he... know?" Hermione made herself speak with a firm, strong voice, "Does he know who he will work with?" she clasped her hands.

Her subconsciousness whispered the answer: no. If he knew, he would say something about it in the train. He would hardly have been silent.

Malfoy? Silent?

He'd bit Hermione throat through right there.

McGonagall frowned, then corrected her tiny glasses on her nose with a single movement of her hand. Her gaze was examining Hermione's face. A small bit of understanding for a moment forced Minerva to clench her lips, but the woman instantly took herself into her hands.

"Miss Granger. Conflicts with Mr. Malfoy... should not affect your duties as school prefects. I hope you understand that?"

Hermione bitten her lip.

"Of course, professor."

"Your responsibilities will be to work... in a cohesive way. Prefects are an example to follow, as you remember."

Merlin, save our school... Hermione grimly smiled and nodded Minerva in an agreement, trying to calm her furiously beating heart. She just couldn't keep it in her head.

She must coexist with a man, to whom he had so strong hatred, that sometimes it became frightening – what if this feeling would remain in her forever? In her, kind and sympathetic Hermione, always preferring to resolve conflicts calmly and often reconciled Harry and Ron, when they bickered because of another minor trifle.

She wondered how they will react to the fact that she will live next door to the sworn enemy of the whole their trinity?

Of the whole faculty.

Of the whole world, maybe.

Meanwhile, the professor continued to press on the inflamed callosity with calm regularity:

"On certain days you will patrol the school corridors from nine till eleven in the evening," she tapped the pen tip on the ink and raised her eyebrows, noticing the expression of Hermione face. Interpreting it in her own way. "It is nothing complicated, do not worry. You will be allowed to use a standard set of safe spells. Its list is already marked in the Prefect's tower."

"In the tower" Granger repeated vacantly, nodding. Trying to make her look meaningful.

In her heart she really had no idea what to do. How to behave herself.

Because.

It seemed Malfoy even suited his position. His faithful retinue of Crabbe and Goyle, who are always dragging along him. Brainless idiots, who are able only to laugh at jokes of their leader.

Does he really need in them?

Yes, he needs.

He used to win on the contrast. And on the influence of his deceased father. To his name he had nothing but poison and self-conceit, that would exceed in the size the whole Hogwarts with all its towers fourfold.

"Concerning the schedule... " Minerva put off the pen and folded her hands sedately, "However, we will discuss it, when Mr. Malfoy comes, and I will accompany you to... "

And suddenly the door opened behind her back without knocking.

And again that disgusting feeling in her belly, similar to what Hermione experienced when her broom first jerked into the air in the classroom with Madame Hooch.

A slight attack of unexplained panic.

More precisely, quite understandable hostility. If it were necessary, Hermione could explain her quick heart beating and icy finger pads. But not now.

Now she began to re-count convulsively the mosaic of portraits, muttering from the wall behind the professor's back.

His footsteps were almost noiseless, and Hermione rather felt than heard - Malfoy entered the office.

She hated to lose control of the situation. And therefore the happening made her angry with the itch somewhere behind her ears. She wanted to sag, feeling his press look at herself between her shovels. To sag and to stamp with her feet from the insulting anger, drilling in her nape.

But of course, Granger was silent. She only licked her lips quickly and isolated herself. She really felt it physically.

One more thing.

She felt as he approached professor McGonagall's desk. She saw Minerva watching him with suspicious look, but with a polite smile. There was a feeling that Hermione was involved in some kind of frivolous, comical experiment. The edge of her eye she noticed that Malfoy stopped a little bit.

Hermione turned her head, glancing at him and lifting her chin.

It seemed that the air temperature in the office fell at once a few dozen degrees Celsius, when their glances crossed for a second. And suddenly choking hand let her go, allowing to breath in.

Malfoy.

This is the same Malfoy as last year. Nothing new, nothing serious. Apart from the fact that the naked eye it was noticeable - he was seedy thoroughly. But he stayed the same. The same worthless hostility and expensive gloss. Tired look and rings under his empty, icy eyes.

And one more thing. A lot of bawdy cynicism.

He snorted as if he was not in front of the deputy headmaster. As if he smelled a farce with his damn nose.

"I was late," he just said and translated his gaze on McGonagall, "Professor Snape detained me in the great hall. He reported that you and... head girl," the last words he spit out, as if it was moving poisonous spiders on his tongue, throwing another quick mocking look towards Hermione, "will wait for me here."

"Mr. Malfoy," Minerva nodded, ignoring this tone and rising from the desk. Her chair drew back and pushed back by itself, crawling its legs on a stone floor. "You are almost on time. I was just beginning to bring Miss Granger up to date on things."

"I hope I didn't miss anything important."

Oh God, he doesn't even care, Hermione clenched her cold hands.

"Not at all," Minerva has got her wand and has easily swung it, muting the light in the office, "Please, come. I will accompany you."

And she walked past them hurriedly, tapping with her heels.

Hermione followed her immediately, even trying not to turn her head to Malfoy, but she saw his tight lips and the expression of deep disgust on his face.

Hell with him. Leave it alone. Let him make faces, as much as he wants.

Meanwhile, Malfoy watched the two go out of the office. And he was overcoming a stubborn desire to punch on the wall. He did not expect. I really he didn't expect it. To see Granger here was comparable to a meet a freakin' dementor. He would have experienced a lot of joy.

He thought that after all it would be impossible to wonder something. If only.

"Mr. Malfoy?" there was a voice from the corridor.

With a heavy sigh, Draco followed the old woman and Mudblood, blinking, when the door to the McGonagall's office slammed behind his back with such intensity that the air wave stirred his cloak's flap.

Now it was clear what the irony was in the voice of professor Snape, informing "the wonderful news" about prefects. And the feelings were not so good.

Draco frowned, focusing in the semi-darkness without difficulty. He felt himself foolish-deceived. Really foolish. So many girls at the school, so many successful girls. And... There's Granger. Goddamn.

It was wrong.

Not his company, no. Not stone corridors, staircases, torches and statues. Not silence. Everything was habitual. All this was even joyfully to perceive.

But the wrong fact was that from the right hand of Draco was mincing this arrogant slut from Gryffindor.

For the first time in his memory, they were next to each other for a long time, not snarling, not flinging each other with habitual insults. Not telling a word. Just listening to what McGonagall was saying.

Destroying each other in their thoughts, he was sure about it. At least in his head he had already sentenced her to death several times.

Come on, you little bitch. Look at me again, and I'm not going to see the head of your faculty is here.

Granger, as if he had heard his threat, stared at the Minerva's back, though she had just stared at Malfoy, he could have sworn in it.

He took his eyes off. Fuck her.

Just. Fuck. Her.

Despite the fact that senile old man Dumbledore decided to show his senile sense of humor... It meant nothing. He and Granger don't have to talk to each other, if they're the prefects of the damn England.

They would never... They will never be able to communicate normally. Damn, that's ridiculous. It even seemed to him that someone in his chest laughed irrepressibly.

His demons disclosed their eyes and lifted their heads, stretching themselves with a crunch. Awakened from silent anger of their owner.

He needs to get distracted.

Draco picked up only some parts of the phrases of McGonagall's monologue, that echoed back from the walls, dispersing in the empty corridor, and also he was thinking about how he managed to get into scrapes.

Into that what had started last winter. About what he didn't want to remember. It squeezed all forces out him and finally deigned to end. It finally leave him broken and extremely worn out. And now... How can he exist side by side with Mudblood the whole fucking year?

To breathe one air with her. To coexist.

They're from different planets. From different worlds.

He is slowly pacing, putting his hands in his trousers pockets and allowed his cloak to flutter behind his back.

She is precise, looks like thin cold needle, fastened under her throat on all the buttons of her shirt and half-throttling with her red-gold tie.

Different. Just like their blood.

What would his father say, if he knows that the Malfoys heir will share the living room with Mudblood?

The heir. He wanted to spit from this word. There was nothing left of the heir, as well as from Lucius. The shadow.

From the thought that suddenly came to his mind, Draco squeezed his jaws against his will.

Lucius would have ridiculed him.

Probably he would say something between his teeth like: "How did you agree to such a thing? Or did you forget what I taught you? You admit it to you, what means you're letting yourself be dirty. My son would never endure to be near with such people like she, even for a few minutes."

The voice of his father sounded in his head, as if Lucius Malfoy lived with him even after his death. Lived in him. Followed him step by step, observing with his glass eyes from his son's skull box.

Sometimes it seemed like it was like that. Sometimes, when eternal thoughts and calculations in his head replaced with voice, dictating him. Indicating voice. Guiding voice.

Damn it. Damn it all. For a long time, everything went to hell.

But it was not in his forces had to change something. Except to decline from the prefects badge. But Malfoy could not allow this. To step back? To lose? Enough. One more defeat - and he falls into a trap, that cuts Malfoy's head off with a clang.

One more defeat... He just can't afford it.

Never.

He will never allow Gryffindor girl to pass before him. To give way. To stay behind. To look at red-gold tie, at her back.

If he knew that she would be the prefect, he...

He... What?

Malfoy crunched his teeth. He's still making excuses to Lucius. To father's ghost.

And it always has been so.

And three months ago, he swore to himself that he would change that. That he won't do that. That, that... There was innumerable these "that". And innumerable impotent melancholy. Melancholy about... ? He didn't understand.

Only one thing he understood: Granger looks at him again.

Malfoy clenched his lips. He just needs to get into his room and stay alone. Lately it was the only thing that could save him. Lately...

The old woman McGonagall stopped in front of portrait of a woman in silk of disgusting color, that looks like bile. Granger also stiffened, clasping her hands. It seems she hasn't unfastened her fingers for a second since he entered the Minerva's office.

"Phoenixus."

The password was quite simple. The lady on the portrait bowed and slid sideways with quiet rustle, opening an entry to a narrow corridor with a low arch. The professor came first. Then Granger. Malfoy breathed in and slowly breathed out through his clenched teeth.

All right, Draco. For real. Keep yourself in your hands and... just let her show you your room quickly.

Encouraged by his thoughts about soon solitude, he entered the inside, stepping over a tiny threshold and looking around stingily, almost not turning his head, without any interest. It was quite enough to understand: the living room was sickly-cozy, although undeveloped. For a second it seemed that everything here is about to decorate in the obsessive Griffindor's banners. But no. Everything has the predominant fairly neutral, gray-beige color. Sofa in front of the fireplace, coffee table, couple of armchairs, at some distance - massive desk and empty bookcase.

Well. The shelves remain empty for a short time. Mudblood will take care that the good part of the library migrated into the prefect's tower.

Draco thought that if he lived here alone, he would leave the bookcase empty and wouldn't heat the fireplace. This abandonment attracted him. As if it added... purity. To the room and to the look.

McGonagall stopped near the sofa, touching its upholstery with her fingertips, and looking round by the way, as if she had seen this room for the first time.

"It is the living room."

Such valuable statement of the fact.

Anger. Where did it come from? Dangerous-pure anger, that didn't encounter any resistance. Like a poison injected into the blood. Burning as...

There was the fire in the fireplace and Malfoy wanted to extinguish it in a moment. To make it darker. Cooler. Calmer.

To keep the light from choking under his skin.

There was too hot. Fucking hell.

Turning around himself lazily, he slipped a predatory gaze over bare walls and high ceiling. Fortunately, there were no ubiquitous portraits that contributed to extra noise. For six years he was too accustomed to Slytherin living room, dark and cool. Sedative. So... neutral. Where stone was stone, not a piece of architectural crap.

"The stairs to the right and to the left lead to your bedrooms. Your luggage has already been sent."

"Thank you, professor."

Malfoy hardly rolled eyes on a low-sounding Granger's cue, but he kept silent, continuing to study the mantelpiece and the clock over it. He wanted to imagine that he was alone in the living room. It turned out badly.

Minerva frowned. Then she coughed quiet.

"Shared bathroom is upstairs."

Now he did not restrain himself - he closed his eyes, feeling like a shiver of disgust passed over him. To share the bathroom with her. To share the fucking bathroom with her. At this moment he felt his patience comes to the end inexorably.

"It is very cozy in here, professor," sincere Granger voice. Of course, she's thrilled with this diggings. But he...

He just gotta get out of here. To stay alone with himself. Listen to the voice in his head.

"Damn peacockery... " he said almost no interrupting of his pale lips. Almost mentally.

"Excuse me, Mr. Malfoy?"

He looked at Minerva with a glimpse, as if by the way. He slid his gaze on her face and folded his hands on his chest, feeling his tense muscles trembling.

"Everything is fine. The bathroom in the tower is... convenient. We don't have to make a trip to Hogwarts every time we want to take a shower. Can I go to my bedroom?"

For some time, McGonagall studied Malfoy through her glasses, as if he was not a student, but dissected frog. Then, apparently, not seeing anything of her interest, she turned away with a sigh and headed towards the writing table. She pushed the top drawer.

"Here are the forms to fill your schedule. When you distribute between each other..."

"Where is my room?"

His phrase ended somehow too loud in ringing silence.

McGonagall clenched her lips, regarding Malfoy with a long look. Granger frowned, exactly copying the old woman. It seems she looked straight at him for the first time, for the last half hour.

She and professor are two idiots.

It's disgusting.

"To the right, Mr. Malfoy. And upstairs."

Hermione sighed when he slid quietly behind her back and disappeared into the semi-darkness of the spiral staircase. She stared into the fire and felt as the inside her whirls a slow funnel cocktail of truly unpleasant feelings.

Shame, irritation, uncertainty.

She unfastened her numb fingers and several times squeezed and clenched her fists to restore blood circulation. She got stabbed under her fingernails. She did not want to say anything, but tried nevertheless:

"Excuse me for that. Malfoy... "

Oh, for God's sake, she apologizes instead of him?

Minerva raised her hand in a stopping gesture. The girl silenced obediently, hiding her look at professor's cloak.

"Everything is fine, Miss Granger. Now Draco is experiencing some difficulties."

Of course. Professor remembered the shitty situation in his family, that suddenly began to justify his shitty behavior. Why not.

"I know."

"That is wonderful. Now let me give you something."

Professor extracted from the open drawer two small notebooks looked like Muggle's. Hermione came closer to examine it better.

"What is it?"

"Enchanted Diaries. You see, prefects may not always be near each other when they may need to discuss something."

Thank Merlin.

"One diary will be yours, the second one is for Mr. Malfoy. It is enough to write something in one, that it immediately appeared on the pages of another diary. It is convenient," Mcgonagall watched with a smile, how Hermione's eyes began to shine.

The girl took the diaries, examining it and turning it round in her hands. Forgetting for a moment, why something burns in her chest. Absolutely empty yellowish pages with slightly tattered edges have absorbed all her attention.

But only for a short while.

"Thank you. I will give him one. If he... " Hermione faltered, frowning. "I will give it to him."

Malfoy agreed to be the prefect. So he has to perform his duties. Otherwise it would be irresponsible for a man representing all boys of the school. And knowing Malfoy so many years, she could say with certainty: he would never allow himself to lose his face, to smirch his own reputation.

"I've heard you live with Mudblood."

It's magic, truly. One phrase - and the whole appetite is ruined. Draco chewed slowly and swallowed the toast. Then he touched a napkin of a corner of his mouth and pronounced articulately, not turning his head:

"Go to hell, Pansy."

After that he was just as measured to take the oatmeal.

Parkinson pouted her lips. And then she hemmed, glancing at gloomy Blaise, sitting on the opposite. Zabini's mood during the week left much to be desired. The beginning of the school year didn't please him at all. Especially after the summer events.

"You'd better eat your breakfast," he barked, tapping with knuckles of his fingers on the table. "And leave Malfoy alone."

Leave him alone? Probably it's something unreal.

Great hall rolled in the shining sunlight from that his eyes had eyesore. In fact, now his eyes always had eyesore. Even from murky darkness under his eyelids.

Draco slept badly.

His bed was uncomfortable and there was too hot: apparently the sun had one goal - to bring the prefect's tower to a great heat during only one day, turning it into a damn crematorium. Among other things, too many thoughts occurred and vanished in his head for the past days. Too many voices changed his mind. Too many flashed glimpsed in front of his eyes.

He also has a headache. Every night.

To such an extent that the vile dull pain sticked to his temples for another half-day, buzzing, and he was sure that it was from the realization that Gryffindor slut was now in the room, detached from his bedroom only with an adjoining bath. Dirty, nasty Granger.

Causing his headache.

Thank to great Salazar that they did not communicate. Did not tell a word. They haven't seen each other. And if they crossed, then it was only fleetingly, in the living room. For a couple of seconds.

On the second school day she just left a schedule of studies and distribution of faculties on the coffee table. And their "serried work" came to an end.

"So how is she? As wooden as it seems at first sight?"

The next coming of migraine hit on his temples and Draco bristled.

"I've already told you," he growled, moving aside the glass of pumpkin juice, feeling like his appetite is finally leaving him, "that you'd better go to... "

"Shh. Honey," her thin fingers clasped his forearm, stroking him on his cloak and descending on his hand to his wrist, touching his cold skin. It did not calm him, but annoyed, "I'm just kidding. Just kidding, you know. I know how you hate her."

Oh no.

You have no idea how he hates.

Parkinson had no idea, indeed. She just stroked his shoulder with the tip of her nose and smiled.

"I like the way you smell."

Draco sighed hard, laying his spoon aside. Realizing that breakfast was finished and he didn't want to eat. Feeling like Pansy's palm slipping on his thigh and strokes his leg.

"I want you like at the las time. In the train," she murmured, trying to change the subject. Looking at the sides. Her false modesty, bordering with bragging. She craved for catching the looks of the girls passing by. And her modesty would be irrelevant.

It's not a secret for anyone that they fuck each other.

Malfoy grinned at the Zabini's glance, who just chocked up his chin with his palm, watching them with a degree of irony. In the train he kept watching over them, standing at the door to the toilet and chasing freshmen.

To fuck in Hogwarts Express toilet is quite in the spirit of Parkinson.

But, it should be confessed, it was not bad.

He remembered her screams absorbed with his fist, staggering coach and his furious pushes into her hot body. Wet sounds of sex and his own clenched teeth. Parkinson's ass constantly slithered down in the sink, so he had to press the girl to the door, holding her balanced.

"I also liked that yesterday you were a little more... harder, than usual," her hand slipped on the inside of his thigh, easily scratching his leg through the cloth of his trousers, and Malfoy almost unevenly glanced at her full lips.

Damn, sure.

In the corridor he met damn Mudblood before the spontaneous fucking between herbology and potions classes. This clearly did not leave Malfoy indifferent. It angered and enraged him. The way she froze in his path, and then twisted her subtle, inexpressive mouth, when he passed by her.

"Why don't you tell anything?"

"He's fascinated by you, Pansy," Blase giggled quietly, throwing juicy green grape in his mouth. Draco grinned, shaking his head.

"Well, definitely," he snorted, translating his look to the places where sisters Greengrass were seating. Daphne winked Zabini playfully and he grinned at the edge of his mouth.

"Of course," Pansy's voice was very smug. And the next moment she said so quietly that only Malfoju could heard it: "Come to our living room. There's no one right now."

Who would doubt it. He drew back and her hand vanished instantly.

"We have transfiguration class in fifteen minutes."

"Sorry... What?" Parkinson barely kept a laugh, throwing a confused look at Blaise, as if in search of support, but he has already turned his attention to the senior Greengrass. Draco rolled his eyes crossly, pointing to his prefect's badge.

"Has your memory failed? I have eyes on me now. And I can't fuck with you in the living room of Slytherin instead of first class, being a prefect.

The girl's lips bulged and Malfoy felt stinging wave of anger under his ribs again.

"Stop pestering me with your whims, okay?" he pronounced it even more peaceful than he wanted.

Pansy sighed, stepping aside and returning to digging her fork in her breakfast. Her offense is just for a couple of minutes. During the class Parkinson will sit down to him and start snuggling up to him like a cat.

"I'll go for my bag to the tower," he threw, when Zabini raised his eyebrows, when Malfoy stood up from his place, "See you on transfiguration."

"Okay. Nott said that he would be a little late."

"Um, okay."

Draco threw a quick glance at Pansy, who was still drooping her lips diligently, and then he shook his head and headed to the exit from the Great hall.

He realized with pleasure, that it absolutely does not care him, what Parkinson feels. She isn't his girlfriend. She was just his sex partner at the moment. She and several girls from Ravenclaw. And several - from Hufflepuff. And several Slytherin girls, who visited his bed. He didn't determine to count all these girls. He didn't need number.

There were many of them.

To spend the night with Draco Malfoy is like to touch a happy rabbit's paw for damn luck. That's what Blaise Zabini once said. And Draco remembered that, he liked this phrase.

Especially he... didn't care about it. When he fucked, he didn't think. And when he didn't think, he felt himself like a normal person.

"Ah!"

"Damn... Granger!"

She collided with him, hitting his chest with her forehead and rebound aside, hitting again her shoulder on the column. Not so painfully. She didn't even make a wry face. She just held the strap of her bag and the next moment she already lifted her chin, looking at Draco as if he was a poison beetle.

"Watch out!" her preachy tone provokes him more than ever, "You're not the only one in here."

The nest - her hair, covered her face half and Mudblood had to jerk her head several times, throwing it back. Draco almost snorted - mocking and evil.

And then they both stiffened opposite each other, almost bristling. Malfoy was so pitied that she kept on her feet, that this regret could be heard by her. He would give much to look how Granger is falling on the floor.

"Look where you're going," he hissed, shaking off invisible dirt from his cloak fastidiously. Glanced at the sides, he was involuntarily looking the eyes of the witnesses of this meeting. Great start of the morning, "Did you become infected with blindness from your boyfriend?"

"Such absurd and silly remark," Granger screwed up her eyes, straightening out her cloak with sharp movement, "It's all you."

"I don't need your assessment."

"I have no doubt."

"Great."

"Great."

He grimaced:

"So, make yourself scarce."

Then he straightened out his clothes again and already took several steps sideways, trying to get around her in a semicircle, when Granger abruptly turned, as if she remembered something.

"Ah, yes, Malfoy."

Merlin, she said that with such tone as if she was broadcasting from the throne. Although the cold in his voice was commensurate with this false mudblood arrogance:

"Remember something, okay? Don't speak to me in places where someone can accidentally see us, leading the conversation. I don't want my friends to think that you and I have common threads to talk about," he hissed, stopping, but not turning around.

He really peered into the empty corridor, counting the minutes in his mind. There will be a class soon, what meant, that Blaise and Pansy will approach him. Great.

Apparently, Granger did not embarrass anything.

"Friends?" she raised her eyebrows, "I can't imagine who you're talking about."

Oh, you better go to hell!

"You have quite a vague idea of this," he chuckled nastily, "With your choice of friends. Beggar and four-eyes...

"Your choice stops at two stupid idiots, Malfoy. So it doesn't care."

"First you're soiling my clothes, and then you're trying to jeer me?" Draco's voice resembled a womb growl, when he slowly translated his gaze upon her, "Get outta here. Don't near to me for a mile."

Hermione stubbornly squeezed her lips when he went again with a confident step down the hallway. And she deliberately raised her tone, pronouncing:

"Believe me, know-all, I have just as much desire to speak to you, as you have, but it's business of prefects, whether you want it or not."

"Wonderful. I'm wildly ecstatic."

"Don't be a child!" she snorted it in his retreating back, making a few involuntary steps after him. And ransacking one hand in her open bag, "Professor McGonagall asked me to give it to you," and then she got the Enchanted Diary, looking at how the Malfoy again stops. He turnes over his shoulder and wrinkled fastidiously.

"What is it?"

"It's... the vehicle for communication."

"With whom?"

"With me," from the expression of his face she wanted to be somewhere far from this place, "If you suddenly need something. We are prefects... "

"We? Did you say "we", Granger?" he giggled mockingly, holding his hand on his platinum hair, which for a moment his right forehead opened, and then again partially hid behind it, falling on one side slightly more than on the other. "Forget it. And don't you dare come to me with a shit like that."

He shook his head under the astonished gaze of the girl, and then threw over his shoulder, resuming the step:

"I'm not kidding, Mudblood. Stop dragging me."

And he walked down the corridor, without turning around.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2.

The first conversation in two weeks - down the drain!

Crookshanks raised its head and yawned, glancing at Hermione. Lucky. All that her cat needs are sleeping and food. And at certain moments, Hermione was desperately jealous of it.

She just got back to the living room. She quietly uttered the password to Yellow Lady, pulling off her bag from her shoulder, then she went to her room, trying not to make too much noise. But she marked that she did it against her will.

She walked through the living room on tiptoe. That's so silly and... annoyingly. As if she's afraid of disturbing someone.

Wait. _Someone_? She didn't want to come across with Malfoy, of course.

Once again. That's why she was almost sneaking to her room now, terribly angry because of her foolish behavior.

Since their meeting in the corridor near the Great hall has passed two classes. He wasn't on the second class. Hermione thought he might have come back to the prefect's tower. Though... For what? He hardly forgot the textbook there or anything else.

Slightly biting the edge of her lip, she came to a standstill, covered the door to her bedroom and listened.

Silence.

It was possible to return to her righteous indignation, that was also supplement with the idea of how much Hermione was out of her mind, that she feared to make any noise for not to inconvenience _him_. It has been no more than two weeks, but she already felt tired and oddly crushed by an invisible blanket. Like someone was smothering her.

Merlin. It feels like it was happening not with her.

Harry and Ron, who knew that Malfoy will be the head of the boys this year and therefore - the neighbor of their girlfriend, all day were striving to "beat him up" for some reason. Hermione was worth a lot of efforts to put them in front of her and to bring to a serious conversation. Concerning the motives of McGonagall and Dumbledore, who chose Malfoy to the prefect's place.

"You listen to yourself!" Harry threw Daily Prophet on the couch and jumped up, pacing from the coffee table to the fireplace and back, "What the hell? Not only that now you have more duties, so also... _This is_! Don't you dare get on the side of this bastard, okay?"

The girl almost choked with a piece of chocolate, that she was chewing with pleasure at this moment. In the home living room there was habitual and calm atmosphere. She thought unwittingly: how much had it seen? How many conversations had it heard?

And Hermione didn't like this conversation.

"What? To get on his side?"

Harry was viciously staring at her, as if she was just shielding damn Malfoy.

"I'm not going to... And I don't support him at all. How could you... " she stopped, that was saying about the active work of her thought. However, at the next moment, she frowned, "I don't _care_. You can beat him to death. The only... I wouldn't want to upset professor McGonagall. Recent events have brought too many problems to the school, and to her in particular. She and Dumbledore are trying so hard... "

She noticed the skeptical expressions of her friends' faces, then shrugged her shoulders and raised her chin, as she always did when she was unhappy.

"I'm not going to add a headache to the head of our House. And I won't let you to do it. I hope this is clear," strict chasing of the text. It was truly, in Granger's style. The boys looked over.

"If this freak would do... at least something... " Weasley looked at the girl very hard, "Promise me that you say us if he dares..."

"He's not going to do anything, Ronald. We don't _even_ intersect with each other."

"You wanted to say, we have arrived yesterday? I meant the future. Harry and I won't let you suffer because of this... jerk."

Hermione rolled her eyes and smiled against her will, suppressing the sudden desire to hug Ron. Ridiculous and redhead. It seemed that he was frighten even more than she did.

"You know, I can stand up for myself. It's going to be okay."

"Promise us," Harry said, who was still standing in front of them. He was irritated, and his lips were squeezed. He was worried about her.

They both were worried about her.

"Okay. I'll tell you if he... will behave himself... unacceptably," she said and thought that Malfoy always behave himself unacceptably. Even with McGonagall he talks like he's standing on the same stage with her.

But it seemed that after these words the boys calmed down. And it calmed her too.

In the evening, Hermione collected herself and came to _his bedroom_ with confident step. It was necessary to give him the schedule and distribution of Houses. She coughed to clean her throat. She lifted her hand over the dark wood and stiffened, realizing that now she will come across with Malfoy's look again. With his disdainful and icy look like December gust of wind.

No. She didn't want to see him.

And that wasn't the worst thing. Rather, he won't even listen to her. He'll tell her to go away, and she'll feel _it_ again. Like dirt. His superiority.

There were quiet steps behind his door and Hermione shuddered, moving back quickly, almost against her will.

Jumping over a few steps at a time, she returned to the living room, feeling that her heart was pounding about her rib, and her back was covered with cool creeps.

The excitement trembled under her skin and in her chest, as if the girl had just climbed into the bear's lair and got out of there unharmed, almost stepping on the beast's nose.

She thought belatedly that it would be possible to put the schedule under his door, but in that case she risked giving him even more reason to be ridiculed by him. What the hell does she need that? It's better to leave it here, she thought.

She jerked her chin up resolutely and threw the tightly folded parchments on the coffee table, listening to the paper slap. Turning and following to her room.

He's not blind. He'll notice it if he wants to. And if no - so it wasn't Hermione's problems at all. Malfoy wasn't a little boy to keep an eye on his every action.

Then she returned to her room, and the time ate fourteen days of study and stay at Hogwarts.

Two weeks. They still haven't communicated with each other.

It was their first conversation with eye to eye, that had ended with his words: "Stop dragging me."

Malfoy forbade her to approach him in the public.

As if she was leprous. As if she needed it! She was just happy to forget about the existence of this arrogant moron. Whatever was happening in his pure-blooded family, it didn't influence on him. He was that person, which he always was - a bunch of aristocratic crap.

During the joint classes, that were quite a lot, he didn't even look at her side. He didn't look at all. Neither in the Great hall, nor in the yard, as if she didn't exist. Only habitual phrases, if someone from Gryffindor stood on his way or touched him accidentally.

On the one hand, it was pleased. On the other hand, it was strange.

As it turns out, you can get used to the negativity and you can notice its absence.

 _Get Used_? That was definitely not required word. It was _wrong_. Yes. Just like that.

Hermione looked at the enchanted diary in her open bag and sighed. His stubbornness would ruin him. His idiocy and completely childish behavior. But it wasn't her business.

The fact that they are now living together doesn't give her any reason to pay more attention to him. If only not forget to use Locking Spells on her door. Though Voldemort will visit Hermione in her bedroom or bathroom rather than Malfoy.

Merlin, only one that thought seemed wild and repulsive.

She went up to the bedside table and took her Poiton's textbook. As usual professor Snape promised to give them a test on tomorrow's class on the material, that they had learned only today.

Sitting on her bed and opening the required page, Granger tried to recall last year's hassles with Malfoy. To remember how they behaved themselves then.

Here he is, skinny, with an inexpressive figure and ridiculously white hair, he is pacing down the Hogwarts' corridor, and she is here with Harry and Ron. Seeing them, the corners of his lips are crawling down.

"What have you forgotten here?"

"Shut up, Malfoy. Is it difficult to pass by us silently?" Ron snarls and immediately becomes confused under Slytherin's gaze.

"Are you kidding me, Weasley? To pass by this stink? My eyes are watering from you."

"What a freak you are," Hermione grabs her friends by their hands and drags forward. Malfoy grimaces stronger.

"Go away, Granger."

Passing by him, she rakes him with her eyes.

"Run to your daddy and make complaints against me."

He grimaces and goes to the opposite direction, throwing some more muck to the trinity.

And it seemed for him quite normal because it meant almost nothing.

But... It would have meant nothing now. Nothing had changed. They had just grown up.

Glancing its hostess from the living room, Crookshanks purred and arranged on Hermione's belly, patting its fluffy tail on the counterpane. The girl shuddered, realizing that she hadn't read a word, leading her eyes through the pages. She frowned and tried to focus on the rules of making broth from the skin of the Gray-eye.

 _His eyes became elder._

That thought made her unimaginable. Lucius died at the end of the last school year.

After seeing the news on the pages of Daily Prophet, Hermione felt a sharp, explosive and utterly unexpected pity. Just because the loss of the parent she probably... could understand. At least approximately. Despite the fact that after she had personally deprived her parents of their memories and after the end of the battle Dumbledore helped her to recover their memory. To get her life back. And it became easier. She had a real loving family for that she was ready to fight.

And Lucius' death, that bastard...

It could break Malfoy.

And one more thing. Hermione wanted that it destroyed him.

But no. He wasn't overthrown. On the contrary, he was still self-confident and cruel. It was read in his icy eyes. Gray. Rainy. Full of contempt to its crystal edges. And it really frightened. Because if the death of someone, who was everything to Malfoy, didn't break him, then what could brake him?

The immortal enemy is the worst enemy.

She didn't even notice how her anger disappeared. Suddenly everything seemed perfectly understandable. Nothing had changed. That's it.

Her glance fell on the diaries again, and Hermione squeezed her lips resolutely. She had already decided to go and to knock at his bedroom or better to wait for him downstairs. He won't be there until the night. When suddenly there was a low clap of the door.

He must had descended to the living room.

Dashing demons in her eyes stood on its hind legs.

Not approach him in the public? Great. There are no strangers in their living room.

Closing the Poiton's textbook with such loud sound, that Crookshank snorted and jumped from her belly, the girl stood up from her bed confidently. After all, she had to prove to herself that nothing had changed. That she could still communicate with him without any problems. In the sense that Malfoy understood by "communication" with Gryffindor students. That everything remains the same as it was.

All genius is easy.

And what exactly is the problem?! Their prefect's duties weren't the reason to wind up herself. And if he refuses to communicate, she can always tell McGonagall about that. And Minerva will certainly take care for that fact, that Malfoy will be replaced by someone nicer.

Yes, of course. That's what she'll do.

Hermione snatched the diary from her bag, opened the door and quickly began to go downstairs, cuddling the diary to herself and feeling like her legs begin to bend. Unclear and unnecessary excitement ate her from within. It made her angry and prevented her to ignore him.

It's just Draco Malfoy. It's just someone she's known for almost all her life. With him connected the most... humiliating moments of her life, to be exact. And now she just has to give him the stupid diary.

She stopped at the last step as abruptly as if she had crashed into an invisible wall.

That's it.

Malfoy was sitting on the couch, sheeting parchments with regular updated charts for another two weeks ahead. Throwing his long legs on a coffee table, slightly lowering his head. His polished shoes are just where the papers were lying recently.

The same.

Where does this stupid certainty come from, that in Malfoy there's something that makes her afraid of him? As if sharp horns are going to appear from his head or his skin will cover with wool. On the couch were sitting the same boy from her memories. Too loudly speaking and too crookedly grinning.

Just a little bit older. Crowded with something that was almost impossible to identify. Whether fatigue, or hopeless, musty melancholy.

Hermione wasn't able to bring herself to take a look immediately and go to the living room. Hiding in the shade of the ladder and staring at his profile, she felt herself like... offendress? Merlin, no one's going to know about that anyway. And you need to notice any trifles in your enemies.

Such as... his hair. It fell on his forehead, touching the dark eyebrows. The contrast of hair with black cloak was somewhat attracted. Maybe that's why a good half of school girls were pining for him. His jaw line was tense crossly. Apparently, not all days indicated in the charts, suited him.

It made her grin gloatingly. That was silly, but at least something was going to be wrong.

Malfoy's lips are squeezed as if he heard her thoughts. The sun occasionally threw beams on his light skin cheekbones and cheeks, from what Malfoy frowned and screwed up his eyes. It was interesting to look at his eyes when it wasn't directed at her with the notorious irritation and hatred.

Why? He remained the same, and it wasn't necessary to examine him from all sides to make sure of it. If there is a man on whom he does not look with dislike, he certainly lives in the reflection of his mirror.

He raised his hand, passing his hand over his hair, removing it from his forehead. Hermione was watching, as it flew between his fingers and laid back, similar to liquid platinum. The idea that it must be very soft to the touch, surprised her and made her angry. She immediately drove it away from her head.

Though for a moment Hermione thought she might understand why almost all Hogwarts' girls were chasing after him. She had to face the truth.

This bastard had become really handsome. His figure, face, hair. Even the shape of his hands. This all was handsome in him, except of his look. Contemptuous and ugly look. His habit of watching with disregard through people, as if they don't exist at all, was very annoying. And after the summer events, apart from the fact that his look became even more empty, it became too absent. As if its boss is dead.

His eyes were of murky ice and rainy gray sky color. Too much poetics for Granger, however this was the first thing that came to her mind. Murky ice could be beautiful too, if not breathed by this ugly mockery that nailed her to the earth. Even now.

 _Now?!_

Hermione stiffened with her mouth open, feeling as the tip of her tongue became colder.

Malfoy was looking straight at her.

He had seen, when she... was watching him openly. Damn it!

"Granger..." he said it with an unctuous voice, that almost burned the Hermione from the inside.

She swallowed, biting her lip. She swore mentally and habitually shrugged her shoulders, then she came down from the cursed step, dipping into the light of the living room. Making a few steps under his mocking look. Stopping by the window and squeezing the windowsill with her fingers so her joints became to ache.

Malfoy folded the parchments in half and threw it down on the coffee table, lifting his feet on the floor. Slowly as if he was playing.

"What the hell are you doing?"

His voice became cold instantly. It was only to wonder how he wasn't choking.

"I was coming down to the living room if you haven't noticed it."

She liked her own tone. Despite all the crap that hit her chest inside, he didn't express almost anything but irritation.

"I've noticed you was staring at me, Granger. It's not normal to stare at people. Hasn't your mommy taught you that?"

"And your daddy..." she said it almost on the machine before she had understood, about who she spoke about. And before she met his icy gaze.

"Shut up," he roared through his teeth.

She closed her mouth, swallowing the end of the phrase, chewing it and noting how his upper lip had wavered in response to her words.

"I wanted to say that, as you can see, you haven't yet been trained in courtesy," Hermione said awkwardly, trying not to hide her eyes.

Malfoy went over her in a semicircle and stopped opposite, at a bookcase, putting his hands in the pockets of his trousers. His cloak slipped down his flexible back, touching his legs.

He was lazy to quarrel with her. He was lazy even just to open his mouth. But he forced himself to squeeze:

"What the hell do you want? To see if I've found your next little gift?" he threw a hostile look towards the coffee table. "I've found. And, you know. With the same success, you could have choked with it."

"I have no doubt."

He snorted.

"I'm not satisfied with half of what says in that again. Who did this rubbish?"

"Know you, that professor McGonagall did this."

"Hmm. Why would I think that it's she? Maybe it's because she just doesn't care that this schedule not suits for me. If Snape would do the schedule..."

"Malfoy. Say it to Snape, not to me."

A small pause, appearing after Granger's words, slightly grated upon her.

"Don't talk to me like that, Mudblood."

He uttered it almost quietly, only clenching his jaws slightly stronger than usual. He looked at her hands with the diary, but returned to her face, giving _her_ the possibility to say why she disturbed him.

"I came to give you the enchanted diary."

"Another _nice_ little thing you can put in your ass, okay?" and he turned around, going back to the soft cushions of the couch.

Their conversation lasted too long. Her temples started to ache.

"Don't be a child, Malfoy. As the prefect you need to have it."

He grimaced. He put his hands in his pockets deeper so that his knuckles clearly showed through the material.

"For what?"

"Professor McGonagall said that if you need anything, we can always contact with each other. I've told you about that in the afternoon," Hermione said, a little bit encouraged that he was listening to her. Frowning, but he was listening.

Malfoy sighed. He jerked his shoulders.

"You're a freakin' nag, Granger."

"Sorry?"

"You've drum it to your head. You will wander behind me with these... copy-books until the end of the day?"

"No, actually. I was hoping that the usefulness of its suitability would come to you a little earlier."

"Do you think that when I am sane, I decide to write a note to you?"

She looked at him with all her rigor she was capable of — it amused him.

"If you think that I enjoy communicating with you, you are deeply mistaken, Malfoy. These diaries give me the opportunity not to meet with you personally every time I need to tell you something. And you'll make my job much easier if you take this now. I don't care what you'll do with it, you can go to Hagrid's cabin and feed it to Blast-Ended Skrewt, but it's not going to be my concern."

He grinned. So it enraged her, instantly.

"You don't have to try, Granger. You won't get points for verbiage."

"I have no doubt. I'm just trying to explain it quite lucidly for you."

His gaze immediately became colder. He discerned mockery in her tone and silently raised his eyebrows.

She held him the diary with a sharp movement - Malfoy didn't even stirred. For some time, they both resembled a ridiculous monument to Incarnated Stubbornness. Neither he nor she were going to give in.

After all, when Hermione felt that her hand was beginning to ache, she threw the diary on the windowsill, sighing and struggling with the desire to roll her eyes. Putting her hand on her hip. Their conversation lasted no more than a couple of minutes, and the girl already wanted to go away from Malfoy, although they both were in different corners of the living room.

She just wanted to be far from him.

In her bedroom.

In the Gryffindor living room.

In London.

It was weird for her talking to him. It was strange for him talking to her. Only chronic anger balanced all this, and irritation, impregnating air in the manner of caustic smoke.

And each of them, probably, understood: this was their first so long conversation. Hermione started to hate her prefect's post.

He didn't keep his cold eyes from her, looking at the diary on the windowsill only with a glimpse. Granger's leg caught his attention, and frowned Draco watched the thigh line under her tight jeans. Then - her kneel, down to her ankle. Mudblood was wearing sneakers. Her leg was small and probably would have looked better in other shoes.

For a second Malfoy imagined the bend of Granger's foot in heels, that so often Pansy wears. With spike heel and platform. She would be a little taller and probably could reach his chin by her nose. If she would be close to him enough.

 _Too close._

You've lost your mind. Maybe you can imagine how you're fucking this mudblood whore in this shoes?

Merlin. What's this about?

He immediately justified himself, that it got him hot from one view of vulgar Parkinson shoes, that she sometimes wears. These shoes equated to the wild fucking. It scratched his hips, shoulders or buttocks. But Granger was the last person he could ever imagine in it.

The acute tide of disgust to himself forced him to turn away, to stare at the fireplace and to squeeze his lips. He had the necessity to wash himself. To take off his damn clothes and to take hot shower. To feel like his skin started to melt. To decay into molecules. There were no thoughts like this in his head. Until he forgives himself being with Mudblood in the same room.

He wanted to soap his eyes and to polish it, washing from filthy dirt his glance, that he threw at her.

 _What the hell_ is he staring at her freakin' leg?

And Granger looked again at him - he felt her eyes irritating his face.

What the fuck is going on? She was staring at him from the corner until he had noticed that. Now they were standing silently opposite each other for a moment and waiting... Waiting for what?

Draco felt a new attack of irritation. She enraged him, even when she was silent.

"What were you doing on the stairs?"

Granger shuddered. Malfoy almost felt the air fluctuation. He felt like under his skin starts to prick. Once again. Again this anger from hanging silence, that Draco couldn't give it the fucking way out.

His teeth clenched. Another minute of silence had passed.

"What. Were you doing. On the fucking. Stairs?" he repeated, feeling that if she didn't say something now, he would simply rupture from rage. Without taking his eyes off the fireplace, he felt the breath accelerated while Granger was raising her head and licking her lips.

He stared at the stone placing and slowly began to count the bricks laid out in a semicircle. Two. Four. Six...

"I was coming down to the living room."

Seven, eight...

Rotter _._

"Don't lie to me, Mudblood."

"Are you capable of anything but eternal insults, Malfoy?" she cried suddenly, throwing with her hands.

It must have turned him with his face to her. It forced to put his hands out of his pockets, squeezing it in fists. It was like a nervous tangle broke out in his throat.

"You're bullshit, Granger. You're so shitty. Only your presence stains me," he blurted, feeling a slight echo of relief in his chest, " _You_ are no longer capable of anything other than self-satisfaction on the stairs, watching after me," he grimaced, looking at her frozen face.

It was disgusting for him to be here. He wanted to remove her from here or to remove himself. The second became more real. So he turned abruptly, heading towards the door. Now he needs Blaise and his understanding look. Pansy and her in-all-blamed shoes.

"Ugh!" Hermione's voice was going to scream, "What are you _talking_ about, you idiot?! Don't you dare assume it! This is... disgusting."

Her words hit his back and shoulders with steel balls, falling to the heels of his polished shoes. Draco slowly turned around. And then a sudden smirk stretched his lips.

Hermione felt the heat pouring her cheeks. Humiliation. Embarrassment. Anger. From these emotions her hands started shivering.

" _Disgusting_?" suddenly Malfoy looked straight at her. In her eyes. Not past it, as usual.

Her heart stopped for a moment. As if Malfoy touched her bald nerve with his look, somewhere in her spine, from what the creeps ran out her back.

"Say it to those who moans my name every night. Under me. On me. In their dreams," what? He wasn't going to say that.

Her lips trembled, and he felt a shred of satisfaction.

Good girl, Granger. Look, listen. _Hear me._

Draco enjoyed the way she saw him. He was doing worse. He knew that he was doing worse. He noticed it in her eyes. But he didn't want differently. He mocked, almost intentionally. It caused him some perverse... not a pleasure, no.

Satisfaction. Heavy and unrelieved. But it itched under his skin, pulling by his tongue.

In his brain boiling such porridge.

Mudblood. Her accusing gaze. What the hell? Why?

If she won't shut up her mouth, his head will burst.

But Granger was standing still, stubbornly squeezing her fists and lips. With blushing cheeks. What a belated manifestation of her fucking courage. Especially if we take into account that he saw that she was shaking. But she had nothing to answer.

She only grimaced as if trying to hide her blushed cheeks.

 _Go away. Get out of here._

"Well... Anyway, you won't understand that," he turned to her, folding his hands on his breast and taking a relaxed-indifferent posture, "You're either a completely frigid bitch or just a _virgin_."

"Shut up, Malfoy," she hissed, warningly bending her head. It was necessary to be blind not to notice how her body became strained, "Don't be so stupid to develop this subject."

"Oh, really?" he grinned, "It seems I hit the bull's eye. But even to talk about it... Ugh," Draco winced, glaringly walking with his glance through her body.

Below-upwards.

Slowly, stopping on her small feet, thin wrists, sufficiently noticeable waist even under her T-shirt, small, completely unattractive breasts and protruding angular collarbones.

He gladly realized that he didn't want her. That these thoughts about shoes were just random.

And he even had no time to be amazed when their conversation took this unwanted color. All he had to do was to go away from here. To the native dungeon, to the native living room. At least for a while. That's why he only said:

"Who will hanker after you and your body? And especially on your dirty blood..."

Malfoy didn't understand as she had appeared before him in a moment. His cheek felt the blow of her damp and firm hand, before he could finish his sentence.

Some time he was just standing and looking at Granger, not realizing it. Pressing his hand to his cheek.

Did she hit him?

It didn't hurt.

He hasn't felt any pain in a long time. But it was... unexpectedly. And it was damn humiliating when he noticed in her eyes that rage, that seems to be about to flash her eyelashes.

"Bastard! You're such a bastard!" her scream almost lost in the growing rumble inside Draco's skull box.

Yes.

Mudblood hit Malfoy.

He felt his jaw shrinking. Suddenly it became difficult to breath: sticky and hot air. And then...

Uncontrollable push of his body.

 _She hit him_. That dirty bitch hit him.

His fingers touched something warm, while the red veil blanketed his eyes, and the next moment Draco realized that it was her throat - warm and shivering under his palm. Her hot skin vibrates from noisy exhales, and Granger's head was pressed to the wall of the bookcase.

It was no more than a reflex. At arm's length, minimizing the contact of their bodies, preventing feverish attempts to twitch from him to the side or to say something.

He didn't want to touch her. He had an aversion to touch her.

Granger's eyes were completely dry, though it was full of hint to fear him. And it was almost replaced by any other emotions. And a sudden thought: I must have looked exactly the same in front of my father.

She finally locked this fierce, humiliating circle in him.

"What the fuck was that?" he snarled, feeling a ripple under his skin. His glare was still rushing about on her red face.

Except Lucius, no one had ever beaten him.

No one and never.

The freakin' slap. He couldn't believe in it.

"Let me... go," Granger hissed, resting her head against the bookcase, as if she was trying to escape his touch.

Malfoy realized that he clenched her throat not too strong, but the feeling, that the vein of her pulse beats right in his hand, inebriating him. Perhaps, if he would touch any other person, if he would feel himself stronger with any other person - the result will be the same. Superiority. But now he's almost reveled in that.

The desire to humiliate her knocked in his temples. Because Granger wasn't hurt. But her cheeks were blushing because of humiliation.

Because of him. That's perfect.

"What are you affording to yourself, you fucking whore?" he hissed again, losing in his anger.

"Let me go, don't touch me!"

Her scream was as evil as his glare. He felt the vibration of this scream with his hand. Draco had no idea what to do next when Granger's hand made its way towards his wrist.

He recoiled.

Granger didn't touch him. Never. He better die on the spot. And she jumped off instantly, as if she was fearing that he would do that again. But Malfoy was only wiping his fingers by his cloak with disgust, making a few steps back, stumbling on the coach.

"Have you gone crazy?" she shouted again, for some reason pressing her hand to her throat and rubbing her skin. Like trying to erase it.

To erase that places, where he had touched with his fingers. Now that places were prickled like by needles. He had to squeeze his hand in his fist to stop it.

She noticed it.

"Now what? Will you hit me?! Damage me? You're going to be out of school right now!"

"I can kill you right now," he barked to her in return, "and go to Azkaban, knowing that one filthy creature disappeared! But I won't. You're not worth it."

Granger shook her head with some abnormal, nervous smile that resembled of bared teeth.

"You're mad bastard."

"Fuck off, you..."

"I'm going to professor McGonagall."

"Great. Go. And tell her you're a freakin' loser, not competently to find a common language with people. Tell her I've tried to embed you in the fucking bookcase."

Malfoy punched a wooden surface with his fist so that Hermione shuddered, taking a step back. Taking his hands away from her neck. Squeezing her lips, jerking her chin.

"And remind her to look for normal people after what happened in the past. She'll listen to her damn egghead."

And suddenly.

Something flashed on Granger's face.

Emotion that made him shut up instantly. He didn't understand what it was. What recalled another face. Full of tears, begging. Frightened. So that for a moment his heart and breath stopped. He stopped himself.

Almost he was just yelling at her, and now he was just looking at Mudblood, who was flapping her eyelashes like she felt this appearing wave.

And his thoughts were frozen in this pause. The only understanding had left: he wanted Granger to cry like the other woman in his head was crying.

But she didn't even think to do that.

"Malfoy, what the hell's going on with you?" her voice returned him to the living room. Her voice was still ranging from the rage, but Granger noticed a change in his facial expression. And it made him breathe out convulsively.

She's right. You're mad bastard.

"Go to hell."

He turned around. In two steps he overcame the distance to the door and pulled its handle. Damn, he won't turn round to her.

Damn, he won't regret.

Probably she said something to him. Or she called him by name. But Draco had already slammed the door and went towards the dungeons with quick step, feeling like his sweating forehead chilled from the coolness of the corridor.

His hands were shaking when he tried to put them into the pockets of his cloak.

You're mad bastard.

Mad bastard.

Because you don't regret what you've done. You regret that you didn't see her tears that was so necessary now. To forget the face that flashed under his eyelids.

The yard was full of students.

A big break between classes had recently begun and everyone was doing their own business: someone, like Hermione, was sitting in the sun until it disappeared behind the approaching storm clouds, and flipping through magazines and books. Someone was walking, and someone was hurrying about their affairs. Not paying any attention to each other.

Today she stayed alone, because Ron and Harry left to discuss Quidditch with Ginny.

So when someone gently touched her shoulder, Hermione recoiled, as if her cloak was touched by red-hot poker, and then she turned round sharply. It was the young man. He raised his eyebrows surprisingly and withdrew his hand hastily.

"Did I frighten you? Sorry."

Oh _my God_.

"No..." Granger exhaled slowly. Merlin, who do you expect to see? Just stop worry about that. "No," she repeated again and smiled hesitantly, standing up from the bench.

Over the last days she always felt herself nervously, it was silly to hide it. Especially when Gryffindor and Slytherin had the shared classes. In that moments she always became silent and rarely took her eyes off her notes.

Why? She didn't want to come across his cold stare from the snake table, so she worked hard, with even more eagerness, than usual.

During the last poiton's class Hermione was stirring the contents of her cauldron so fiercely, that she had splashed out the potion over the edge accidentally. And her desk began to steam, immersing the room into a bluish fog.

Snape deprived Gryffindor fifteen points.

And also five more for the fact that Neville squealed like a girl when he thought that the fog was choking him. That brought even more fun to Slytherin than the deprived points of Gryffindor.

But Hermione desperately blushed under the frankly astonished looks of her classmates and desperately regretted about one thing only: she began _to notice Malfoy_. It terribly distracted her.

No, she didn't care about him.

But now for some reason he just _was_ in her brains. He was in the room with the others, standing out from their snake pit.

Harry and Ron tried to talk to her several times, but she just smiled and told: "Everything is okay". As if she could convince that to herself. And to them too.

It seemed they believe her.

Because they looked very happy and chatted with her about everything, except that could touch the prefect's tower. Hermione was grateful for their sympathy, however she understood that a long time guys' patient was not enough. Neither Potter nor Weasley could keep silent about Malfoy. It was easy to see that this conversation will still take place. But by this time, Hermione promised to herself — she'll know what to say to her friends.

The prefects' duties distracted her from the thoughts that was sitting in her head. But when Granger was lying in her bed or sitting in the Gryffindor living room, where she spent most of her free time, her eyes were falling to a sticky space and some images in her memory.

Absolutely unnecessary, superfluous images. The latest images.

As if someone threw good food for thought in her head. In fact, nothing terrible had happened. She and Malfoy just quarreled with each other. He just let himself to show his fury, and then... and what happened then - it had remained an enigma.

What can't be said about the touch of his cold fingers on her skin.

At that moment Malfoy was holding her at a distance and pressing her to the bookcase over her throat, and she was looking at him without stopping. She was looking while his hand was trying to clench harder on her neck but it couldn't. She was looking while her throat was bursting from suffocation. Not because he was choking her. But because that was his first touch.

The first touch in her life from Malfoy. And that was _such_ the touch. When he was looking at her and hating her so much. So clearly hating.

His hand was shivering then.

She had hit him first. She had lost control of her stupid anger first. Then Draco was telling her the same _meaningless words_ , as always. The usual muck about... about what she didn't want to hear a word.

And then she suddenly blushed. And she recovered only when her own hand was pulsing and filling with heat from the blow, but Malfoy was standing and looking at Hermione, as if he refused to believe that she not only just _touched_ him, but _slapped him on his face_.

Then the world had abruptly spun and the back of her head was burned with pain from hitting the bookcase. And his firm fingers on her neck. His breath. His glare, from that...

Air.

No.

He was, like, breathing for both. Hard and loud.

For a moment, for an insane, crazy moment, she wanted Malfoy took a step towards her. One step. And she could have seen the expression in his eyes. Strange.

 _Strange_. It haunted her day after day.

She had never seen Malfoy like that. She hadn't seen that she had noticed in him two days ago. Something dangerously resembling...

Hermione once again pulled herself up. Foolishness. Delirium. Damn Malfoy. Unrestrained idiot. Self-enamored... pompous...

 _Again. You do it again. Stop thinking of him._

Hermione touched her neck with her fingers. There weren't any bruises, of course. And there was no pain. But his outburst frightened her, anyway. His whitened lips and clenched jaws expressed such fury, from that her entrails were squeezing to the size of a matchbox and covering by a layer of ice. By that ice that always lived in his eyes.

Malfoy was a permanent iceberg.

She almost grinned. And then she heard a cough from outside her thoughts and understood that there was an unfamiliar young man before her. She blinked, returning to the schoolyard.

"What can I help you?"

"Your book has fallen out of your bag."

Only now she noticed that the guy was holding _the_ _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ in his hands.

"Thank you," Hermione murmured, taking it from him and carefully dusting the book jacket.

"You're the girls' head, don't you?" the guy looked at her face, smiling. He was a little bit taller than she, with warm brown eyes and sharp chin. His chestnut-colored hair was tied up with a short tail from behind.

"Yes," Hermione smiled against her will. Pleasant companions have now become a rarity. And definitely, he was the pleasant one.

"My name is Kurt Miller. I'm from Ravenclaw, sixth year."

"I see."

"And you're Hermione Granger. I know," he laughed, and the tiny wrinkles in the corners of his eyes made his look even warmer. Hermione also smiled back, raising her eyebrows in surprise and pressing the book to her chest.

"Hmm, yes. It's me."

"You see? I know a lot about you."

"Really?" Hermione squinted her eyes and laughed. She thought it was stupid, and he just spread his hands in response.

"You're the best student in Hogwarts, and almost every professor says to us to take a page out of you. Perhaps it's an honor to be acquainted with a witch like you. I mean, I'm sure in it."

"Oh, okay. That's very kind of you, Kurt."

And they fell silent.

She wanted to invite him to sit down and to talk. To offer herself as a companion. Suddenly, she realized that she hadn't spoken to people for a long time. Harry and Ron mostly chatted among themselves, and with the prefects of the other Houses she discussed organizational issues concerning academic performance only several times.

Well.

Kurt Miller was still looking at her, and she looked down, suddenly becoming flustered and embarrassing. Realizing that she wouldn't offer him to sit down with her.

She's too... not for that kind of guy like he was. Spontaneous dating had never been her strong suit. She was rarely met like that, touching her shoulder and giving her the fallen book.

Rarely. Never.

She was just Granger. The excellent student. Harry Potter's friend.

"Well ... I was glad to meet you," Kurt looked at her with the same smile and it seems, he even gently winked to her, "See you?"

"Thanks again," Hermione tore her book away from her chest and waved it slightly in the air.

"Okay. You're welcome."

And then she was watching him turning round and leaving. At the ladder he turned his head for a second and winked again. And Hermione hid her eyes, sitting back on the stone bench, realizing that she was still smiling.

 _So silly._

She wiped a smile from her face, putting the book into her bag. So silly, but nicely. It seemed he found her cute. Judging by how he winked and turned round. It was strange to feel herself like... a girl. Now.

What Malfoy had said about what happened in the past year... That was true. Probably that was the only reason she didn't go to professor McGonagall with her complaint and the demand to change the boys' head. Just because he was right.

Last year, the Dark Lord's defeat, the returning Hogwarts to its previous level - all that during one winter. And diligently dissimulation that everything is okay. Nothing had happened. This was painful and disgustful at the same time. Too many people were broken. Too many people were now hiding in their impregnable shells. And to remember that you can pay attention to young men like Kurt Miller...

The smile lifted the disobedient corners of her lips again. Hermione put her bag next to her and decided not to care that smiling for no reason was stupid. After all, who couls see it now?

 _...Ugh._

Leaning against the stone column with his shoulder, Malfoy realized that he was watching like Mudblood was smiling. She was looking at Miller like he was being sent to her from heaven by fucking angels.

He felt disgusting.

Her nasty smile, her shaggy hair, protruding to different directions, uncombed by the wind. How someone can like it? Is this idiot blind?

And for Salazar's sake, why _Malfoy_ was staring at her?

He wasn't going to be here. He wasn't going to stare at Mudblood, who was sitting on the bench under the trees. Fucking coincidence led to another irritation.

That was supplemented by the fact that Pansy was late. And he was tired of waiting.

Draco turned round and walked towards the prefect's tower, destroying each red-gold tie with his eyes, that he saw on his way. He liked when he was passing by Gryffindor students, they hid their deceitful, hypocritical eyes.

He noticed that. He knew. He wanted to make it so.

So be it. Let them get used to that. The Malfoys were the greatness and purity of blood.

He began to feel sick when someone poor looks at him. Damn not-wizards. Such Mudbloods, like Granger.

He avoided her, it was worth to admit. Malfoy hadn't liked that outburst and that memory, that flashed in his head with such clarity. He had to live in harmony with it. To learn. And she just spoiled everything.

It wasn't difficult to forget about Mudblood. While she hadn't reminded about herself, as it was today.

And Draco wasn't going to think about it now. Particularly.

His look was drawn by redheaded girl, who was sitting on the windowsill and winding her red lock on her finger. She licked Malfoy with her gaze from the tips of his shoes to his platinum hair and then she smiled.

 _I want you._

But not today.

He passed by her, clenching his teeth and feeling, that her indecent gaze was following his back. Putting his hands into his pockets, he barked something to young students, who instantly embarrassed and became bent.

Place.

 _I said, place._

Needles of irritation under his skin began to prick. And especially in his palm, that had touched her neck two days ago...

"Mr. Malfoy!"

Draco stopped before the staircase, turning around.

It was McGonagall. He barely restrained himself not to roll his eyes. The only thing he wanted — to get away from that all.

Just. Away.

And he knew Granger hadn't told professor about their incident. He didn't want to think about the reason.

"Yes, Professor?"

Minerva looked slightly worried. She stopped in front of him, but somehow he still had the feeling that she hurried. Her eyes were peering at his face, and Malfoy felt the urge to turn away.

"I am in hurry, so listen to me carefully and tell miss Granger that till tomorrow you will begin to patrol the school at night."

At this moment, he really almost groaned with impotent irritation. In fact, he only sighed.

Great. Just fine. Just amazing.

"Of course," he gasped, "I will patrol the second floor, and she is the third, I suppose."

"No, you will do it together," McGonagall tightened her lips, looking at Malfoy from top of her glasses. As if she suspected that he can leave her favorite student alone in the dark stone corridors. "Mr. Malfoy, a girl should not walk alone at night."

Her tone was preachy and annoying. Though, probably, anyone would now start to annoy Draco. Mentally he had already moved to tomorrow night and to this _fun_ pastime - to wander with Mudblood hand in hand in the dark.

"I hope you have found a common language," the old woman said.

Oh, Yes. Of course, damn.

"Yes," he hissed, looking into Minerva's eyes, "Of course."

"Very good. Then I rely on you."

She gave him another long look, as if she was trying to make a few cuts on his skin with it. Then she nodded and briefly said goodbye, shed rushed down the corridor, resuming hasty movements. Draco was watching her smooth back, making an involuntary association with Granger.

The same dry. Her look. Her posture.

 _Lifeless. Object._

He snorted and started to go upstairs when he was called out again.

"Draco, darling, wait!"

Irritation hit his brain with fireworks.

He turned his head and stared at Pansy with such ferocious look that she could easily crash dead like a piece of ice. But unfortunately, it was only his look that forced her to stop a few meters away from Draco.

"Sorry, I'm just a little..."

"Late. Fucking three minutes late," he hissed, turning away and continuing to go upstairs, hearing renewed tap of her heels behind him.

"Sorry, baby. I just..."

"Fuck off, Pansy."

"Did I hurt your feelings? But we're going to..."

Malfoy clenched his teeth very hard. He turned to Parkinson sharply again and stopped her at the first step with his glare.

"To fuck? Go find someone else for this today."

"What..." Pansy rolled her eyes, but not daring raise her voice, "I'm not..."

She wanted to say — she's _not a whore_.

She'd better be silent.

"Oh, just shut up," Draco rolled his eyes and barely touched the tip of her nose with his cloak, when he turned around, renewing his step.

She didn't follow him. She didn't begin to shout at him. No one argued with him. No one dared.

Against his will there flashed the eyes of Granger in his memory when she hit him and almost beat the sparks out of his eyes with her slap. It was _blazing_. As never before.

Her eyes were the color of thick chocolate. So hot chocolate that he could burn himself.

Maybe then Malfoy pressed her pressure point that caused the sleep mechanism into action. But what did he say? Merlin, he didn't even remember that made this little Gryffindor whore to become so angry.

 _Damn it._

"Phoenixus."

The portrait of disgusting lady moved to the side as Draco called the password.

He should just go into the living room. To sit down the coach.

To close his eyes. And to see.

Granger's face was looking at him through his eyelids. With blushing cheeks, with nasty smile on her lips. He didn't get any pleasure from it.

So why is he thinking about her? _What the fucking fuck_?

Yesterday during the poiton's class, when she spilled her poiton on the desk, Draco was the first to say loud jokes in her address, and Slytherins were enthusiastically assenting to him. However... usually it was normal to mock at her and Golden Potter. It was quite natural. It was done thoughtlessly and spontaneously.

But yesterday...

Yesterday, he was thinking. He was thinking over with concentration what to say to hurt her badly. To hurt her violently. To hurt her, so she would escape from the class and cry in the toilet till night.

He needed her tears. Like stupid, unnecessary, child revenge. As if it could really change something. As if she cries, she will no longer appear in their living room, or his painful memories will stop to torment Draco.

However, Granger hadn't even said anything. She was just sitting and looking down.

All of his insults have the answer. Always. Destructive look, squeezed lips. "Fuck you, Malfoy" or "Shut up, Malfoy!". But yesterday there was no answer. At all. Except that Potter had fumed over it, but Snape quickly took this impulse to his hands. Granger was just staring in front of her, starting to pound the ingredients in her stone mortar again. And that was wrong.

What has changed? What was wrong?

 _What the hell happened with them this year?_

And why are these fucking questions sitting in his head? Damn! Why does he care about that? Just forget it, Draco. Jesus, as if it's important!

He needs to look aside. Just think about something else.

Pansy. To think about Pansy.

She got him near the toilet last night and pressed him against the wall, petting him like a cat. When he let her kiss him, she knelt down without much foreplay.

Not just because her kisses were always deep and short. Probably, not only because of that.

She started to unfasten his fly. He watched her adroit fingers and wondered how many pricks she had caressed. How many belts she had unbuckled as she did now. Many, probably. But...

He didn't care.

He closed his eyes, putting his head back, and felt her hands taking off his pants from his hips, while her lips were leaving wet kisses down his belly. Descending lower and lower.

Pansy's mouth was always good. Half a minute later his dick was getting harder. Shaking his hips to meet her lips, grinning Draco felt, how quivered his upper lip. As the beast in his he chest calmed down. Feeling like her tongue glides over him, like Parkinson tightly closes her lips around and starts sucking.

" _Harder_ ," he growled.

And she sucked harder.

The way he liked. As much as he liked.

Her mouth was wet and experienced. It was holding his cock almost entirely. He didn't need more. Only her mouth and her guttural, throttling moans.

One minute. More. More. Three-five-seven minutes.

When there was some noise in his ears, he embraced her head with his hands and began to push to her mouth by himself. Sharply and strongly, feeling like his hot cock slid to her throat. Realizing that Parkinson was choking by it. But she continued to moan.

Falsely.

Fucking falsely.

But that was not it. Damn, that wasn't what he needs. But he was moving. Feeling his anger. At himself, at her. _At her mouth_.

At that fact that she let him doing with her _more_ things.

What - more? He didn't know. He didn't want to know. He just fucks her.

He fucks her, but she wasn't enough for him.

Draco clenched his jaw, making the quick pushes with his pelvis to Parkinson's swollen lips. He was staring at one of the cracks in the masonry wall, and it seemed to him that this crack getting bigger. It gets close to him.

He was watching and feeling like Pansy's fingers made their way to his back and bit into his skin. His belly was twisted from hot, sweet convulsion. He uttered a low moan and impaled her head on himself, closing his eyes, putting his head back and cuming, listening to the pounding of his heart and holding his breath for a few moments, trying to prolong this feeling.

That was good, that with every whore (every _girl_ , he corrected himself) Draco felt the same hard, turning and twisting him inside orgasm. From that his legs, belly and fingers were trembling. His head became lighter immediately.

The opened front door made Malfoy give a start, returning from Pansy's mouth to real time. To the living room.

Damn. In time.

He once again hated Mudblood. He only managed to throw her out of his head.

Draco adopted the position in that she couldn't notice his cock, puckering his pants. This situation seemed funny. He has the cock-stand. Granger is here. She turned away carefully and pretended that he's not in here.

 _Go to your fucking bedroom, faster._

He was watching her constrained movements and her raised head. She passed by him, staring straight ahead her, and almost walked into the archway, behind that there was the staircase, when he had suddenly remembered McGonagall's words.

I'll tell it her next time, he thought. And then he roared for some reason:

"Wait."

 _Fuck..._

She stiffened. Then she turned round slowly, looking at him with question.

She had nothing to say? And there was no that expression in her eyes, that he had just watched in the school yard.

He lost his temper.

"I'm talking to you, Granger," he hissed, looking into her frozen eyes, "Etiquette doesn't oblige you to answer me?"

"You've ordered to me, Malfoy," she said in the same tone.

He clenched his teeth and stood up. Against her will she took a step back, setting against the door frame of the arch with her back. She wasn't afraid, no. Malfoy made her nervous. She just wanted to get away from him.

Not to prop up the wall with her shovels. _Such unfavorable position_.

This thought flashed through her mind, but it was too late to take any steps. He looked at her from his seat, raising his eyebrows sarcastically.

Damn. Bloody hell. She didn't want to see this glare. She didn't want any glares after what had happened in this living room. There wasn't a trace left from her carefree mood, and if Kurt Miller still keeps her mind, Malfoy immediately replaces him with his unwanted presence at this moment. Her warm brown gaze turned to icy.

Icy eyes.

She felt about her wand in her pocket. Malfoy noticed this.

"Seriously, Granger?" he watched the way she was getting her wand and Hermione's hand directed it straight at Malfoy.

She felt herself more safety this way.

"Just stay where you are staying. And I won't remember that a few days ago I didn't go to MacGonagall to inform her about..."

"About my behavior," he finished maliciously, making a face, "I know. Don't thank me, it's not necessary," there was a brief silence, "By the way, what about the old woman..."

He took a rather sudden and sharp step to her, what caused Hermione to raise her wand higher and to stare at Malfoy tensely. He stiffened for a moment, and then a slow grin appeared on his lips.

"Did you learn the list of allowed spells?"

"I know much more spells than you can imagine," she said.

Her cheeks were blushing again.

"So what? Will you light on me with Lumos to death?"

He mocked at her, making slow steps toward her.

"Or you will _break school rules_ and kill me right here?"

He mocked openly, knowing that those spells that could cause harm weren't in this list. Hermione squeezed her wand.

This was the gesture indicating her helplessness to him. Fear. Let it be. She manages her wand better than he does.

As if he was hearing her thoughts screaming in her mind, Malfoy stopped.

And suddenly. He laughed almost sincerely.

Bloody hell!

For a second Hermione completely lost in their living room, half-stunned, holding her wand, as if it was the only guiding line in this room, filled with incomprehensible things. With ringing and dangerously explosive.

He has so... _pretty smile_?! What?..

With snow-white even teeth, regular shape and size. Shadow from wrinkles in the corners of his gray eyes. And a dimple on his left cheek.

Damn dimple on the damn Malfoy's cheek.

He really laughed, but there was so much falsehood in him that her breath suppressed. Like a grin. Hermione blinked. She forced herself to frown. She had found some ridiculous, unsure phrases in her head, immediately bursting from her tongue:

"You have a problem with your head, Malfoy. Just keep this in your mind. And... _don't you dare_!"

This time, Malfoy didn't stop.

And her laughter had disappeared. Then he appeared near her. She immediately straightened her shoulders, throwing her wand at the level of his collarbone.

"I won't touch you, silly bitch."

His voice was such that she wanted to become clenched. And she almost clenched, probably against her will. Because he looked at her like she was coward.

"If you dare touch me..."

Malfoy's face instantly became stony.

"Not for anything. Touching you means to dirty my washed hands once again. I won't make one more mistake, okay?"

The poison in his voice returned a ghostly feeling that nothing had changed. Everything was the same. And she felt herself... calmer. How much calmer could become when he was two steps away from her.

Hatred in the air and her wand trembling in her white fingers divided them.

"What do you want then?"

So quietly? Inside herself she shouted it to his face.

"From you? So I want you to die faster," Draco grinned, taking another tiny step to her and stopping, folding his hands over his chest.

"Hardly."

He looked at her wand involuntarily, twisting his lips. And then he said suddenly:

"The Head of your disgusting House asked me to tell you that tomorrow we'll patrol the school in the evenings," Malfoy said it in a tone that sounded like they'd have to bathe in a tub with worms every day until the end of the year.

Hermione was looking at him for a time in complete amazement.

"This message was worth this circus, that you've made?"

"Circus?" Draco grimaced at the Muggle word.

"Show. Delirium. _Ostentation_ ," she pointed them both with her free hand, maliciously compressing her lips.

"Oh, yes, it was worth it. I understood one thing, Granger," he was really full of this disgusting self-confidence, "you're afraid of me."

Hermione was still staring at Malfoy's face, hoping that there was a doubt and mockery in her gaze, and not really fear and panic, that almost covered her with its head as he approached her.

One more thing.

She needed to be distracted even for a second. Because Malfoy brought her into real hypnosis. Everything in him.

Pale skin. High cheekbones. His jaws converging to the chin. Aristocratic thin nose and full lips. Eyebrows, darker than hair. Living platinum, partially covering his forehead.

He really grew up. And these were not the changes that would please her. She didn't want to pay so much attention to this man, and if he had not kept her in this corner for so long that her hand with the wand started to ache, she would not have been here long ago.

Hermione cursed to herself, taking her eyes for a second. Damn, why she is looking at him?

"Can you hear me, you fool Granger?"

"I hear you perfectly. I think about what kind of idiot you are in your ridiculous assumptions."

She turned her face away from Malfoy, quickly licking her parched lips.

"Idiot?"

"I'm sure that _this word_ is familiar to you, although I can say a lot of epithets. And now, don't think I'm rude. But I should..."

She wanted to say that she should go.

Rush to her room. Feel her heart beating. Lock herself from him and curse herself that she stopped at his request then.

But Hermione paused on the half-phrase, feeling a sudden push in her palm - her wand collided with his chest.

Draco took a step forward.

"What are you..." Hermione sighed, dashing back. Pressing with her back into the stone wall, raising her hand higher. Scratching his chest with a shaft through his fabric. The fabric of Malfoy's shirt also rose itself a little, following the tip of her wand, that now rested again the recess under his collarbone. Why this didn't stop him?

Why had it to stop him?

"Malfoy..."

There wasn't warning in her voice. There was growing panic and tension.

"You're not afraid, are you?" he hissed, bending over her.

Higher. Stronger.

But she has her wand. And he is unarmed.

This didn't give him strength - he was _so close_ that she can see his every eyelash with a slightly curved tip. Hermione's hand, holding her wand, was bent at the elbow, allowing him to come to her closer. He smells of a cool, rainy morning.

"Go away," the girl said, not taking her eyes off his pale face. She said it sufficiently firm and confident. Feeling, that his smell begins to penetrate in her nose - more, stronger. From what her body becomes covered with icy shivers.

His pupils enlarged - the darkness almost entirely absorbed the icy gray color of the iris. His look was darting over her face. Again. He was looking _at her_ again, not through her. And from this she felt the incomprehensible heat, completely devoid of thoughts, while Malfoy was looking for something in her burning face.

Gosh. What is it.

"You're afraid of me, Granger," he whispered.

This whisper stuck into her like an awl.

"No."

" _Yes_."

"I'm not..."

"So why are you trembling?" there was something in his voice.

His voice was with harsh, from what - Merlin, help, - Hermione gasped. She never heard such a voice from him.

His eyes slid to her lips quite suddenly. And it stopped at it. It froze, as if unconsciously. Hermione thought that his look was about to penetrate inside. _Inside her mouth._

The tip of her tongue was stabbed, and she barely restrained herself not to lick her lips.

It was a provocation.

Because it seems that all this is not with her. She didn't want this. And she heard how clear and helpless her head stops thinking, refusing to understand what is happening now between them. What kind of abnormality is happening in this dark corner of the living room?

Thoughts only twiddled around the closed circle: Draco Malfoy. As if in an attempt to return the mistress to consciousness. But that didn't happen.

Because.

Her eyes almost slid to his mouth against her will. Forbidden thought was in her head: how is it - _to kiss Draco Malfoy_? And she suddenly became panic-stricken. For real. As never before in her life.

Perhaps that's why her wand fell out of Hermione's fingers and...

The thunder of such violent force rumbled outside the window, so that the glass shook in its frames. Crushing this instant cacophony of sounds on their heads. Forcing them both to realize - their faces were few centimeters from each other.

A deep breath burst into Granger's lungs, when Draco lifted his head sharply. He recoiled from her, twisting his lips in disgust, looking at her with inexpressible disdain and coldness.

Hermione was feverishly ignoring the remaining light taste of his heat on the tip of her tongue, that she hadn't touched. For Merlin's sake! Lord, what was that...

They were as close as if ...

She breathed out sharply. She squatted down and began to look for her wand brokenly - it was almost ridiculous.

"Merlin, Malfoy!" she muttered, "If you'll ever approach me, I'll kill you!" her voice was shivering as Granger turned her face away. She wanted to say something else, but Malfoy interrupted her:

"Don't think that I wanted to do this," he hissed, taking a few steps back for credibility, "That was nothing, okay?" I'm right. I'm always right.

He passed his hand over his face, as if trying to shake off her look from himself and to hide his nervousness. And it helped to ignore the tight hot knot in his stomach.

He... _he has the cock-stand_ , damn it.

Granger finally found her wand and jumped up, backing away. Not stopping to look at Malfoy with warning glance.

"Stop staring at me, Mudblood. That's disgusting. _That's_ because of your smell."

"Go to hell," she murmured, slipping into the archway and disappearing into the darkness of the staircase.

He heard her stumbling steps. He heard when the door slam shut. There was his heart beating and thunder in his ears. For several seconds he was standing and gasping. Looking out the window with the floating swirls of water on it.

He didn't understand what had just happened. He passed his hand over his face again. Closed his eyes.

 _Take it away. Take it out of his head._

What the fuck?

What...

He almost kissed her.

He almost kissed Granger.

He wanted to teach her a lesson. To show that he's right. But her lips and reaction to... Stop it, now.

Thoughts in his head flew, and each one, reaching the brain wall, burst, leaving behind it a sticky haze. And bewilderment.

Malfoy jumped to the chair in two steps and with growl knocked it over, tossing it sideways. Crash. Something was broken. The walls of common sense were collapsing with the same crush in his head a minute ago, that his father had built for him for fucking seventeen years.

Father...

 _Damn._

Without looking back, Draco rushed to his bedroom. He slammed the door and almost ran to the mirror that was hanging by the bed. He stared at his reflection, as if he expected to see someone else. But there he was.

And it made him even worse. Even more incomprehensible. Even more disgusting.

 _What the fuck is happening to me?.._

Malfoy buried his hands in his hair and closed his eyes.

This is turbidity. This is Pansy and her damn mouth. He was just excited, and fucking Gryffindor whore was near at that time. Merlin. Merlin...

There was the thunder again, and heavy drops were hammered out of the window with double force. The echo of another's voice froze in his ears. On the edge of consciousness. The voice that darkened in his eyes.

"Forgive me..." his hands clenched into fists. His closed eyes burned with fire, as if all the sand of the world got into it, "Forgive me, _father_."


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3.

"Lucius Malfoy's accomplices?" Potter raised his eyebrow, shaking his head. "Skeeter is absolutely crazy."

"But, Harry. It said that the muggle-born family disappeared yesterday," said Ron, not stopping from the newspaper, and put the oat biscuits into his mouth. "It... can't... be, anyway."

Harry took the newspaper away from his disturbed companion, leaning over the table, and folded it in half.

"I've read it. It said that it's early to sound the alarm. And there's no evidence that they were killed by someone and that someone continues Lucius' work. And no one could find evidence that Malfoy has something to do with it."

Weasley was chewing grimly and looking at Harry from under his thick red bangs. Loudly swallowing the biscuits, he turned to Hermione:

"Tell him, Hermy. Though, Rita Skeeter is rare chatterbox but she wouldn't mobilize the Prophet for no particular reason."

"They're just out of useful news," Harry took his glass with pumpkin juice, "I don't want to believe that some Death Eater kidnaps muggle-born families of wizards in London. For what? Blackmail? Or..." he slowly looked at Hermione. The girl sat silently, staring at her plate.

The boys looked over with each other. Then they realized a silent dialogue with their looks.

 _"_ _What with her_ _?"_

 _"_ _Ah, God only knows..._ _"_

"Hey..." Potter easily pushed her elbow, and she flinched, looking up.

"What?"

"Something happened? You're so thoughtful today," Harry examined her face captiously, trying to find the cause of her thoughts which were shielded her from the outside world.

"Is this because of the Prophet?" Ron immediately put in, instantly catching a reproachful look from his friend.

"No," Hermione was digging up her plate with fork abstractedly, "I'm just a little sleep deprivation."

"What did you do last night?" Potter sipped some juice from his glass and set it back on the table, looking as she became confused.

Hermione bit her lip.

Really, what did she do last night? Except laying and looking at the ceiling with dry eyes until the morning light flooded her room with gray haze. Until Malfoy moved in his bedroom. If you listen hard, she discerned how he was opening cabinet doors.

Then Malfoy went to the bathroom and the sound became closer.

He went his bare feet on the floor, then turned the water on in the sink and cleaned his teeth.

Hermione tried not to imagine how he looked after sleeping. Was his always perfect hair disheveled? Were his eyes drowsy? Were his lips squeezed as usual?

In her naughty mind, he was in pajama pants, without shirt and barefoot. Leaning over the sink and washing his face. And water was trickling down his arms to his elbows. On his neck, accumulating in the deep of his collarbone. His wet hair adhered to his forehead and temples. He spitted the water and dried himself. He looked at himself in the mirror. He turned his head one way first, then the other to check whether his skin was still perfect.

Of course, perfect.

It's fucking Malfoy.

Then he threw the towel over his shoulder roughly, turned the water on in the bath and pulled down the elastic band of the pajama pants, from what remained the light print on his white skin of his neat belly. She wanted to run the tip of her finger over it, feeling the prominence.

And this print suddenly became _perfect_ on his body, too.

"Hermione!"

The girl jumped up, spilling pumpkin juice on her hand. Quiet horror from her own thoughts almost made her hair gray.

"Merlin! You've fallen asleep with your eyes open?" Ron looked at her as if she stopped to understand English. "What's happening?"

Crap. Some crap was happening to her!

"I'm thinking...about...patrol. Today we have the first patrol with Malfoy," Granger said, wiping her hand with sharp movements and looking at Weasley, " _Joint_."

"Damn," redheaded looked haggard, knowingly shaking his head, "it sucks, of course," he stated.

"I don't know what to do. We're..." she raised her eyebrows, diligently trying to throw image of Malfoy out of her head and cursing herself, "We... almost don't communicate with each other."

"Seriously? Still?"

"What's strange about that, Ron? You don't need to wonder."

"Well. Just you're both prefects and... that's unusual."

"I don't communicate with him. And I'm quite comfortable," she put down her napkin and went back to the breakfast.

"And of course, you know," Harry muttered, looking at her with a strange suspicion, "he's our enemy. He'll stay the same."

"I know that," she was staring at Potter in his eyes, slightly bowing her head and squeezing her lips, not keeping the irritation, " _thank you_ for reminding me."

"Harry, don't be stupid," Ron frowned, "Hermione should at least try to find a common language with him. After all, they live together. Or he would put her out of the world."

Harry rolled his eyes, shaking his head and staying in his opinion. Weasley looked encouragingly at her.

"You can communicate normally if you'll want it."

"Exactly, Ronald."

"But, probably, you'll have to harden yourself, eating dragon shit every day."

"Such a wonderful metaphor, _Ronald_."

"And what about the Prophet..."

At this moment, Hermione's look stumbled upon damn Malfoy who just came in the Great hall.

Pansy was mincing behind him, clinging to the sleeve of his cloak with her fingers. Hermione's heart stopped for a moment. Granger looked aside hurriedly, forcing herself to look at her friends, who started some stupid argument about Rita Skeeter. The corner of her eye she saw that Draco went to the usual place at the Slytherin table and sat down.

She even thought he looked at her. But, glancing at him, Hermione was convinced that she was going crazy finally. Malfoy was sitting in his usual royal manner, listening to what Pansy was muttering in his ear. His gaze wandered at the plates, lingering on one, then on another dish.

He didn't even notice Granger sitting in the crowd of Gryffindors.

So why?

 _Don't think that I wanted to do this..._

From these words that rang in her head, she almost choked on a piece of bacon and eggs, which she was just carefully chewing.

Damn him.

He didn't answer.

And when Granger came down to the living room later, the chair and the tea table were turned over. There was the broken vase on the floor. That wasn't difficult for her to clean up, using Reparo. But to realize that he was so mad because of that disgust that appears every time he looked at her...

Damn, it's Malfoy! It's just _nothing special_.

And yesterday too, it was nothing special. When he looked into her eyes, and Hermione thought that his eyelashes will flattered and he'll bend to her and... Gosh!

She needed to be distracted.

She snorted to herself, glancing at the boys so they didn't accuse her again of sleeping. What are they arguing about the whole morning?

"...if you don't understand, the last wave of death that swept among muggle-borns, also started with one family!"

She choked with omelet again.

"What?!" Hermione stared at Ron, "What did you say?"

Harry sighed irritably, took off his glasses and covered his face with his hands.

"You didn't read it?" Weasley pointed a finger at Harry, "He took the newspaper away from me. Take it and see what it said on the front page."

Hermione glanced at Potter who, without looking, pushed to her the Daily Prophet. The girl quickly opened it, running her eyes over the words.

 _Lucius Malfoy's case has been reopened?_

"What?.." she read quickly the small text, announcing the loss of the muggle-born family of George Bellow that was actively wanted by the authorities.

She looked up at the boys who was intensely silent.

"But Malfoy's dead," she said, clutching the pages of the newspaper so that the paper was creased instantly, "At the end of the last year, he died in Azkaban, and those who worked for him...were executed. This information was in all newspapers. This is the information confirmed by the Ministry and..."

"Listen," Harry looked up from his palms and looked at her, "what's written in the article is wrong. There're no Lucius' accomplices. Maybe, it's just coincidence?"

" _Really?_..." Ron snorted, "This wouldn't have been written in the Prophet."

"Shut up you, or not?"

"Harry. I'm witch. My parents are muggles," Hermione picked up the newspaper, "if this is true, then..."

"It's going to be okay. Lucius is dead. His case about destruction of... half-blooded families is closed."

Hermione gazed into his eyes, as if trying to find a disproof to all written.

And even more...

Harry spoke so confidently that she calmed down. However, her hands still remained cold.

After all, the Ministry was now really paying much attention to that. To catch everyone who was even slightly close to Eaters' affairs. And these leaders had been dead for a long time.

A few more seconds, she looked at Harry and then nodded because he was waiting for reactions to his words. Then he nodded, too. He looked at her again and returned to his breakfast, starting the conversation with Ron, in what she didn't want to take part. She folded the newspaper. Then raised the glass of pumpkin juice to her lips, glancing towards the Slytherin table again.

What did she expect? She really wanted to believe that nothing. But the complete lack of reaction to what had happened seemed strange.

Malfoy put a hand over Pansy's shoulder lazily, allowing her to feed himself with slices of apples. He looked at Crabbe and Goyle, who were mumbling something and sitting opposite him, and specially didn't notice the Prophet that lay before him on the table.

Judging by Crabbe and Goyle, they couldn't wait to read the news, but they avoided Malfoy's reaction.

Hmm. He looked too calm for the person, about whose father was written in newspapers after that scandal. Perhaps, it was only a mask, of course. And, yes. Probably, it was usual because, moving her gaze towards Slytherins, sitting a little distance away, Hermione made sure — almost every student was watching in his direction constantly. They took a look and then turned away, leaning over the neighbor's ear and whispering something.

Of course, Malfoy wasn't shy. From childhood he gets used that the name of his family often heard on the lips of crowd and featured in the Ministry. In particular, over the last couple of years. It seemed Lucius tried to slander him deliberately but the Malfoys remained respectful and crowned to this day.

She didn't want to go deep into it. Publicity wasn't alien to Draco, so it could be assumed that his coolness was absolutely sincere.

Hermione looked away, thinking about, what Pansy was feeling now. He threw his arm around her. Probably, it was warm? ..

Or not.

Cold. Bitter cold.

If Malfoy was ever as close to Hermione, she would have instantly turned into an iceberg. From his look and icy skin. Hermione touched her neck with her fingertips, remembering his cold hand.

His only touch to her. Practically, the only one in her life. Full of hatred and anger.

And then she slightly closed her eyes, remembering what she had felt when he moved to her so close yesterday. He didn't touch her, only with his breath. And something was in it. Malfoy looked at her lips then. And it meant that he was thinking about to _kiss her_?

She wanted to laugh out loud. God, what a nonsense.

Hermione sighed and started eating. Switching her thoughts the other way — she had to send a warning letter to her parents. It would be better for them to spend evenings at home, not walking the streets. Maybe, Harry was right, and there was nothing particularly wrong with the family of George Bellow.

But, safety is paramount.

The worst occupation for Hermione Granger was waiting. And now, she was sitting in her bedroom and waiting.

The evening came quietly, despite the fact that the last hour she spent in the library, glancing at her watch. Deciding to be late for patrol, as if it could wound Malfoy some way.

Most likely, he'd be angry to the fact that he had to wait for her a few extra minutes.

In the end, Hermione wasn't late and arrived earlier, sitting in her bedroom in front of the mirror and mesmerizing the enchanted diary with her gaze, which was seen from the corner of the desk drawer.

After that day, when Malfoy grabbed her by her throat, the second diary was gone from the living room. Hermione was interested, if he took it. And so, during transfiguration's class, she opened the diary on the first page quietly and wrote quickly: _21:00, in the living room. Patrol._ And biting her lip, she glanced at Malfoy, who was sitting on the next row.

He met her gaze and grimaced.

She slightly lifted the diary, showing him that she made a note.

His upper lip quivered angrily. He put two fingers to his throat, pretending that he was sick.

She rolled her eyes and turned away. Their meaningful dialogue ended this way. He didn't answer her but when Hermione turned again to him, she noticed that the diary was lying on the edge of the desk.

Clearly, he had been read her message.

And for some reason, she almost smiled, thinking that he brought it with him.

 _Stupid_. Silly. Idiot.

She shut her eyes.

Why it happened that Malfoy started to take more and more thoughts in her head, crowding out the others? For example, poitons' test, progress of junior years and even, sorry Merlin, thoughts about Harry and Ron. How many unnecessary questions were spinning around in her head?

How did this happen?! And — _the most important_ — how to stop it?

Her eyes fell on the watch. 20:55.

The patrol would be very long. Very unpleasant.

She sighed, feeling her heart started to prick. She stood up and rubbed her cold hands together. She wasn't afraid of him, of course. And she wasn't nervous absolutely. She grabbed her wand from the bedside table and held her breath for a moment.

 _Absolutely no nervousness._

But somehow, she opened her door very quietly and went downstairs silently, stopping at the last step. She squeezed her lips and stepped into the living room.

Malfoy stood back to her, holding newspaper and rocking from heel to toe. Interestingly, he decided to read about Lucius during the whole day for the first time? Somehow, Hermione thought that he didn't allow himself to touch the Prophet while he was in full view of others.

The fire outlined the contours of his body.

Malfoy was without his cloak in a light black sweater that stretched on his tense shoulders. His trousers were perfectly ironed.

Hermione watched his jaw muscles were moving. Was he angry? At her? Maybe, not at her because his look slips through the lines somehow... heatedly. Frankly, she didn't want to face with him.

So that Granger felt, as all was compressed from mild panic inside her. In the next moment, she heard the crackling torn and crease of paper, and the girl shuddered, barely catching some air with her lips. Damn.

With a noisy exhalation, he crushed the Prophet in a small paper snowball and threw it into the fire, leaning against the mantelpiece with his elbows and lowering his head. Hermione didn't dare moving, knowing that she was watching something very... personal?

Her eyes were chained to his hands which he buried in his hair.

Slim, beautiful, with slightly protruding knuckles and knotted veins on his wrists.

Hermione watched in fascination as they clenched into fists, flowing the hair through his fingers. Platinum, shining in the light of the fire. Nobody had such hair. And now, for some reason, she was definitely sure — if she would touch them, it'll be like silk.

His shoulders were raising from the heavy breathing. The sweater fitted Malfoy's body as if it was a second skin. But not white. And completely black.

She squeezed her lips.

She couldn't bring herself to shuffle her foot or move to give away her presence.

"You tramp like fucking elephant. I've heard you on the stairs, Mudblood," his muffled voice pierced her like a balloon that had released all its air with plop.

It became even a little easier.

"Is everything okay?" she asked as if nothing had happened. And squeezed her wand in the pocket.

He turned his head. The fireplace's light jumped on his profile so it seemed that his skin wasn't so cold at the time. His stone face was showing no emotion.

"You've decided to mock at me?"

Really. Why did you suddenly decide to ask Malfoy if he was okay?

Hermione gave herself a mental slap in her face. If she tried to behave herself "as usual", then it was very bad.

"Not at all. I thought you're... excited."

Please, shut up, Hermione. It's not necessary to make things worse.

With bated breath, she watched as he turned to her. She felt his gaze on her old chemise, worn jeans and sneakers. She wanted to cover herself with something. But something made her to jerk her chin with indignation.

He squeezed his lips.

"What, Malfoy, it's not for you?" she said, and there was no her care which usually was when she talked to her boys.

"Shut up, Granger. We'd better to finish it. I'm not in the mood to tolerate you for too long."

"Oh, trust me, it's mutually."

He snorted and left the room silently.

A few seconds, she watched him on his back. Well, of course, only Malfoy could curse her without saying a word. Just turning around and putting his back under her violently and powerless glare.

Hermione walked behind him, clenching her teeth and forcing herself not to look at him.

Minute, one more minute.

Ten. Fifteen. They were silent. He was walking a little ahead of her. She was behind him.

Patrol wasn't so bad. When they finished with the first floor, Hermione had completely relaxed, devoting herself to the examination of favorite walls and portraits, glancing at Malfoy's shape from time to time, almost merging with the darkness.

Only his hair stood out with bright spot.

When she got tired of staring in the dark, she again glanced at Draco, noticing that his shoulders, even though they were straight, were stooping more and more.

He put his hands in his pockets, staring straight ahead of him, all in his own thoughts. His jaw muscles revived.

What he was thinking about?

Of course, it didn't interest her. But, it was weird to see Malfoy upset. So much so that even such possibility as general patrol alone wasn't used by him to crush her mentally with his insults and stupid jokes.

As it was last year.

Now he was just... patrolling.

Silently.

She looked away and forced herself not to look at him at all. Isn't she supposed to be happy? He didn't care about her. The Prophet trumpets about his father. Maybe, someone started Lucius' work. And maybe, he hoped that this was so. Or he thought about if newspapers remembered about his father, it will affect him.

Such tyrant, as Draco, always will care only about his own skin. Even if it will touch his own blood.

The Malfoys' blood. Crystal clear.

Hermione grimaced. She was disgusted and, therefore, she felt herself in safe. Yes. Here was what she felt about him always. And she will feel it.

Disgust.

 _Detestation._

She was so happy that she even almost smiled at her thoughts.

"You're tramping so fucking loud!" he growled suddenly, turning around sharply.

Subdued with clenched jaws and low fury, his voice made her jumped up.

"I go quietly as a mouse," Hermione rested against his look stubbornly.

Darkness and raised feeling of disgust, turned entirely on him, gave her support and strength to ignore the icy needles of his cold gray irises. He narrowed. He turned and walked on, squeezing his lips.

 _What's_ wrong with him?

He didn't answer her for the second time tonight. He allowed himself to remain silent for the second time.

Why?

The feeling that everything was going wrong, pushed her irritation on that level, where usually only a thin thread breaks. And the man loses patience.

Apparently, that was why her feet stamped on the stone floor abruptly. Advisedly. She heard his muffled breath. He stopped.

"What's wrong?" she blurted out before he turned around.

"Granger. Don't exasperate me."

"Answer me!" she passed him and stopped, "I know you, Malfoy. I know you most of my life. _What's_ happening?"

He looked at Hermione, squeezing his lips.

"Fuck off, okay?"

No, damn it! This isn't the answer! Maybe, the problem was in the fact that Malfoy was acting weird. What attracted her attention. And if there was a chance to stop it, then it would be silly to miss it.

"You're not as usual and if it's the one of your stupid attempts to irritate me or Harry and Ron, then..."

"You stupid idiot."

He resumed his step but before she had time to stop him, she grabbed his elbow.

"Malfoy!"

He froze. And she froze, too.

He turned his head so sharply that his platinum hair tumbled over his forehead and eyes.

"Take. Your fucking hands. Away," he hissed, escaping from her fingers.

Hermione's heart stopped for a moment. Hermione was still touching soft sweater's fabric and looking at her palm as if she touched a hot firebrand and not get burned. She looked up in his eyes.

"Is this because of your father?"

Something very bad was on Malfoy's face for a second before he roared:

"Stay out of my life, bitch!"

The echo ran down the stone corridor.

She recoiled from him as if he'd slapped her in the face. But he didn't.

He had an aversion to it.

The anger mixed with irritation and sympathy in her, and that damn sympathy made her eyes burn. Sympathy is not what she should feel to him. He won't have sympathy for Draco Malfoy. He didn't deserve it.

"Look at you! You're so pity!" she blurted out, making an involuntary step ahead, "What are you? What? Besides your eternal mockeries, your... stupid jokes. Your exaggerated self-importance. Your supposed power that was bought by your father. What. Are. You?!"

He growled, baring his teeth.

"You know nothing, Granger. Don't you dare open your filthy mouth. My father and I are totally different. _Completely_. You don't know us! Don't even think to say something about him. I won't let you."

"What would you do? You won't touch me anymore. After you throttled me. But your fingers even didn't clench. Merlin, Malfoy! It's absurd!"

Draco sighed and straightened out his sweater.

"I still want you dead. Every second," he hissed, destroying her with his look, "I'd like you and everyone like you don't pollute this fucking world. That there were no more Mudbloods in the damn Ministry and this school. You're everywhere. You're multiplying like cockroaches. Around the world. But for every cockroach... for every, _Granger_ , there is sole which will crush it."

"But this sole is you, isn't it?" she jerked her chin, feeling her knees were shaking, "You can't do anything with your own hands. Even those idiots, like Crabbe and Goyle, you're using as pawns. Why? You imitate your father, who never did anything by himself?"

"I _told_..." he almost roared again, however, he clenched his teeth, swallowing a growl. His voice was very loud in the corridor, "I told you. How you dare. Talk about him."

How this bastard dares shut up her mouth?

She wanted to express all her indignation out loud but...

Suddenly she realized that _this idiot_ smells chocolate. And this smell grabbed her by the scruff, throwing to yesterday. To the corner of their living room. To his expanding pupils and heavy breathing.

 _..._ _So why are you trembling?.._

Her lungs were twisted.

Why he was so close to her? What the damn ability to block all around suddenly — and even herself.

He towered over Hermione with trembling from rage lips and eyes, which could, apparently, kill her. Now. To kill her right now, in this corridor. But she wasn't afraid.

It was one more challenge. Loud and furious.

"The truth hurts, am I right?" she whispered, stopping her urge to stand on tiptoe to say this, looking at his face, and not from below upwards. But then she would probably touch his chin with her nose, "You're a big boy, Malfoy. It's time to take it. Even if this is the bitter truth, you know?"

He took a step towards Hermione, driving her in the stone corner.

She took a step back. She saw his thin nostrils became swollen and his jaw clenched.

What the hell she was doing? What did she want? Malfoy was furious — she saw it. And he continued to approach her, so the little hairs started to move on her body.

"What's your truth, Mudblood?" Malfoy spitted out, "That this ideal world will take everyone even such poor as you and your family? Only idiots believe in it. Or freaks."

"Shut up, you have no right to say so."

"Really?"

He took another step. She moved a little sideways but his hand run into the wall near her head immediately, cut off her path of retreat.

"Or your truth is that dirty blood disposes to pity?" he smiled a little. Nastily. He was only who does it so, "I'm not sorry for you. I feel disgust. When you pass by me. When you stare at me in the Great hall," her heart froze and the breath was cut short, "When you sit next to me. When I try to sleep in my bedroom and realize that you're behind the wall. _Behind the fucking wall_ , I hate this feeling. Do you think that these thoughts about you will cause pity? Hardly."

Hermione gasped, looking at him. She choked with her tears, which, she swore, he won't see. However, her eyes were burning, and she wanted to look away because this situation was disgusting-unnatural. Malfoy was unnecessary here. He and his words.

Dirty. Dirt.

"My family loves me," her voice screamed hoarsely. It gave herself away, and Malfoy understood that. Because his eyes lighted up, "And no matter what blood they have."

"Am I a kid, Granger? Your arguments are just incoherent mumbling."

"No!"

"My family loves me," he mimicked her and clenched his teeth, meeting her puzzled look, "Such nonsense. Unimaginable nonsense, Granger. You don't understand."

She didn't understand another thing — why he came so close to her? It spurned her. It disturbed her to breathe and think normally, leaving only a sense of his own smell and awakened anger.

"This not my fault, Malfoy, that you can't boast the same."

His heart was broken.

"What did you say?"

"No one loves you. It proves once again how you behave yourself," he was looking at her. He didn't believe her words, "It's not you."

"What the fucking attempts to get into my head?" he hissed, his look remained cold and tense.

"No. And it's not your fault," she swallowed, "that your father has never..."

Before she could finish the sentence, he slammed his hand on the wall. Granger blinked but continued drilling him with her look. Her eyes were burning but she couldn't turn away now.

"Don't you dare say anything with your filthy mouth!"

"That's your anger, right?" she whispered, sliding with her gaze, muddy from heavy tears, on his pale face, standing out in the dark, "You're jealous of me."

His look was trembling. He was trembling.

"Granger," he hissed menacingly, "It's not like that, okay?"

A little prickly fear added to the quiet perseverance.

"You'd like to change your... _blood_ for father and mother who will love you and..."

"I said shut up!"

Let this stupid whore shut up. Just because she doesn't understand what she's talking about. She squeezed her lips and swallowed again that her thin neck strained.

"I'd like you were dead," he said, "You and your blood. Disappeared."

Shut up, Hermione. Better shut up now.

And she was silent, feeling pity and anger for this man. He had no family. Not now, when his father was executed and his mother almost went crazy. He had never had family, and everyone was trying to do the same with Draco.

The same pompous nothing.

And they did.

"But you can _nothing_ ," she looked up and prayed to Merlin for not to cry. Her voice didn't tremble, "Your pawns aren't here."

"You don't know what I _can_ , Granger. And I don't suggest you to tempt your fate," he pushed away from the wall abruptly, meeting Hermione's eyes. Took a step back, he looked at her as if she was an insect. Big, fat bug in the middle of the table, "One family of Mudbloods has already gone. I'm sure your family is the next one."

Her heart thumped in her chest, and he turned away. He just turned away, intending to continue the patrol. To leave Hermione with flying heart and burning entrails. And treacherous tears on her eyes.

It was too much.

"You're not better than your father, Malfoy!" her desperate cry hit his back . Hermione froze when she realized what words slipped from her lips, however, it was too late to return them. The resentment lashed her in the ribs with whip.

His light skin seemed to have become even more ashen shade as he turned and made this: a step toward her.

 _Stop_. Please stop.

"I'm better than he," he growled through his teeth, pausing a few inches from her face, and it made her to feel it again.

Rainy morning, chocolate. And if he doesn't draw back, everything will go to hell.

She felt that she heard something that she wasn't supposed to hear. Something that broke out from the depths of Draco Malfoy's cold soul. Something that he wanted to believe in.

"Why are you better?" she said. Breath out.

She could have sworn that she succeeded. She drove him crazy finally. Now he'll swing his arm and punch her. However, there was something completely different.

"I'm better because I'm alive."

She looked at Malfoy's face, absorbing the emotions that came alive in him for a moment.

Despair. Hope. Fear.

Hell, it was a panic. And he was so fucking close to the edge. She wanted to grab Malfoy so he didn't fall into the pit. And not to wonder — what the hell she did.

"I'm alive," he breathed into her face, suddenly gripping her shoulders with his cold fingers.

Shaking her as if she didn't understand the obvious. Shaking her again and again, and her head went back, touched the wall.

 _"_ _I'm_ _fucking alive!"_

Suddenly there was hard to breathe from his strangled cry.

His madness captured her. His smell. His hands. His closeness. He stopped shaking her, almost touching her nose with his nose. He continued to kill her with his glance.

The pain from compressed fingers on her shoulders was practically nothing compared to what Hermione saw in his gray eyes, that looked at her. Unbecoming-deeply. His look drilled two wounds in her.

"What the _fuck_ are you looking at me _like that_?" Malfoy's voice was quiet and low, slightly strangled, as if he uttered this phrase mentally, "When will you shut up at the goddamn right moment?"

She opened her mouth, afraid to say a word. Fearing to frighten off his hand that was burning her through the fabric of her chemise, suddenly seemed to her so strong. Not aristocratic. Strong, holding. And... he's warm.

This discovery shocked her.

He's really warm, warmed up by his own anger.

"I..." she looked at his mouth.

"You'll die, Granger. And I'll just look at it," he said it quietly. Almost without moving his lips. The words beat against the walls of her brain and scattered. Losing their own stinking sense. There was only his forbidden smell.

There was only his forbidden warmth and squeezing fingers. It was he, and there weren't his words. They seemed to settle on him. They paved deep wrinkles from the delicate wings of his nose to corners of his lips. Almost against her will, Hermione tried to raise her hand to erase them but he only squeezed her tighter, just above the elbow, not allowing to touch him.

And she couldn't shake off the cloud of this stupor.

"Can you hear me?" soundlessly, "You'll die..."

The inch frozen between them. Merlin. _It's Malfoy_.

And her back shivered from this awareness. And before Hermione realized what she was doing, she raised her head closer to his lips. Forcing him to freeze. It wasn't her. His smell did it with her.

Malfoy shook her shoulders lightly again. As if he guessed what she was going to do.

"No," he said it even quieter than the previous one. But his look was lost as her own. Almost scared.

"Okay."

The cutting feeling of déjà vu disappeared. All thoughts in his head shrunk to one solid point when Hermione raised herself a little again.

When she barely touched Malfoy's lips with her own. When — and it was the worst terrible — he didn't move. He only hardened even more. And it seemed his lips became icy and burning at the same time.

Merlin, Hermione... Maybe, this is the end. Because her legs were lead from the feel of warm breath on her cheek and fixed mouth on her own. The quiet limp exhale, some kind of moan, broke from her chest, she just didn't have time to keep it.

One second. One heart beat and his hands tightened immediately, as if he was going to push her away. Of course, he'll push her away. He didn't even close his eyes.

He was looking at her in mute bewilderment and didn't move.

And she was looking at him and feeling his icy stare reads these unspoken pleading phrases in her eyes — don't push me away, not now, _please_ — and didn't move. As if he was... allowing?

Hermione made a promise to herself to die after that. Immediately. And looking down, she slowly opened her mouth and gently rubbed on his tightly squeezed lips with her own. Not thinking about it, hearing only the roar of her heart in the ears.

It didn't mean anything. Nothing.

It was perfect.

The lightest and hot touch in her life, which sent a current throughout over the body, turning her entrails. She had kissed before, of course. Victor kissed her twice, deep and wet. Then she thought about how long he was going to torment her mouth about hygiene and the level of acid-base balance in the mouth.

And now... She had no thoughts.

She froze when he exhaled gently. When his mouth opened suddenly and Malfoy's hot tongue slid on her lower lip, a big amount of fireworks exploded in her head.

 _This_ moan broke away from her chest again. And suddenly, Hermione had felt that he touched her only with his lips and hands. Involuntarily, she bent her back, as if trying to feel his chest. His belly. She wanted to feel him closer. She wanted to kiss him as Pansy did. Deeply, burying her fingers in his soft hair, which touch she could feel on her forehead.

His hard hands descended on her shoulders and stopped just above the elbow, squeezing harder, not allowing her to move.

It lasted only one second. And then he stopped. He stepped aside and stared at her. Hermione opened her eyes, looking at him. Feeling with all her being the border on which he balanced. He'll push her away.

Now.

And it'll be right.

Here it is. Resistance. Squeezing jaws.

"Bitch," he growled to her lips. Loud hoarse voice. She felt like his exhale pushed in her mouth, "Your buddies didn't even teach you how to kiss."

He pushed her away, releasing her shoulders, so she hit against the wall with her back, looking at him with her big eyes.

 _What_?..

"Are you the same in bed? Boring and wooden," he grinned, taking a step back.

Hermione didn't move, feeling the fire on her lips. Her under lip was still damp from the imponderable touch of his tongue.

Malfoy was looking at her as if she fell in his eyes even lower. Lower than the underworld in which she was at the moment. He raised his hand and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, wincing in disgust.

Then he turned away and spitted out.

"I don't know who fucks you, Weasley or Potter," he said, taking a step into the darkness of the corridor, "but I even feel sorry for them. If I were in their place... I'd choose someone more attractive. Who has more sexuality than book shelve has."

She opened her mouth, looking as he was leaving. Feeling his taste.

Unable to find words for the first time in her life. To offend him.

And he was rushing down the corridor and counting his heart beats.

Turn. Turn. One more turn. Fucking endless Hogwarts. Only at the thirty-fourth heart beats he allowed himself to stop, clenching his fists. She didn't follow him. Perhaps, she was still standing at the wall.

The taste of her lips forced him to close his eyes. He put a hand to his mouth, swiping across it with his fingers.

He kissed her.

"Damn," he wheezed out and punched the stone wall, not restraining himself.

That feeling of imponderable gliding... She reached out for him. She.

His dick was so tense that he felt the pain. Damn. He had the cock-stand because of that half-kiss. Because of her huge eyes. Her uncombed hair.

Fucking Mudblood. How she committed that?

 _How could she_ let THAT happen?

"Damn..." he began to wipe his lips frantically with his hand again, feeling that they still have her taste.

The taste of mint and cinnamon. Probably, she added it in her tea.

He hated cinnamon.

He hated her.

He hated her with all that lived in his soul. With all that he was. With all his being.

And he swore to Salazar that his heart was crashing in his throat, and his lips were still feeling her mouth. And he began to rub them furiously again.

Nevermore.

Never. More.

Whenhe came across her in the corridor and didn't look at her, Hermione didn't believe herself.

Everything happened spontaneously. She was racing to transfiguration's class, and Malfoy was coming out from around the corner. It was extremely undesirable meeting. And extremely... unexpected. She just buried in his green-and-silver tie with her face. She had no time to open her eyes when she realized that it was him. His smell with slightly faint note of eau de cologne.

She squeaked out something, and Draco just pushed her to the side with one sharp motion and passed by her. Hermione came to her senses and looked after him when he was already twenty meters from her. What was this? He said nothing? He didn't call her clumsy, awkward, and Mudblood...

He just pushed her aside.

It wasn't the greeting that she had expected after what happened yesterday. She expected anticipated anger, irritation... at least something. She thought that they came across in the living room in the morning and gnawed each other's throats. She thought he would do at least something... somehow... But he wasn't in the living room. And Hermione's mood was spoiled because...

There were previously prepared phrases in her head. There were so many phrases!

She wanted to poke a finger in his arrogant face and say quietly and with dignity: _You're nasty, disgusting, loathsome asshole! Yesterday's kiss was the worst I've ever felt in my entire life! I'd better swallowed the damn snake than to feel your body next to me._ Just like this.

And nothing else.

Calmly and with dignity.

Despite the fact that those words rattled with screams, tearing the eardrums inside.

But he. Silently. Moved her aside.

 _Who fucks you..._

 _Boring and wooden..._

 _Book shelve..._

Her fists clenched themselves.

"Go to hell, you bastard!" she shouted and shuddered from how loud was the echo, bringing these words to his ears.

With quiet horror she watched as he stopped. He turned around. She didn't see his eyes but she guessed his eternal indifferent facial expression.

"Such a great deal, Mudblood bitch. To throw words in my back," his ironic voice sounded very quietly but she heard every word. She knew that the transfiguration's class had already begun. But her feet seemed adhered to the floor. There was an alarming bell in her head.

"I can tell you this to your face forever! Believe me, I have something to say!" her voice was oddly thin. And it amused him.

He _didn't believe_? Well, okay!

Fucking okay!

She darted off and went toward him with confident step, and the sound of her own shoes echoed in her head with rhythmic march:

 _You're nasty, disgusting, loathsome asshole! Nasty, disgusting, loathsome asshole!_

When she got closer to him, there was crooked grin on his lips. He really didn't believe! She clenched her teeth, feeling like everything was burning from anger inside her.

 _Nasty, disgusting, loathsome asshole! Nasty, disgusting!.. Nasty!_

He was close enough, and her steps became smaller and quieter.

 _Nasty..._

She stopped and stared at his face.

"Bastard," she mumbled, noticing how his eyebrows raised.

Again. He laughed at her.

His grey eyes were looking with disdain, from what she wanted to tear her hair out.

"That's all?" he asked, folding his hands on his chest.

"You're... nasty and disgusting. Loathsome asshole," Hermione blinked. Bitten her lip. It was still not as impressive as it sounded inside her. She took a deep breath, "And, by the way, I'd rather swallow... the snake. Than to kiss you again..."

She shut her mouth because his face was suddenly dangerously close to her. His grin disappeared.

Malfoy's lips squeezed.

"There was nothing."

Hermione barely restrained a hysterical laugh, taking a step back.

"Well, Malfoy. Of course."

"Listen, Granger bitch," he licked his lips with swift movement, and Hermione put all her moral strength not to observe this movement with her look. She remembered his taste and felt a trembling feeling in lower belly, to her own horror. Merlin's beard...

She'll _never_ let him kiss her. Never.

"The fact you accosted me yesterday... it means nothing."

"I accosted you?!" Hermione felt the saving wave of anger again, jerking her chin, "You pressed me to the wall!"

"Shut your fucking mudblood mouth," he growled, sharply turning his head to the right and looking at two students from Hufflepuff. When there was silence in the corridor again, he looked at her with scornful look, "I don't want this loathsome rumor spread in Hogwarts. I swear, Granger, if you could share this absurd with someone, I'll kill you."

"Yeah, I've already heard it," she answered maliciously, turning away from him.

He grabbed her chin with his icy fingers. Then he turned her head to him. There was a fear in her eyes and her pupils dilated.

"Did you understand me?"

"Fuck off, Malfoy," she turned away again, trying to free herself but he pulled her back, and Hermione thought she heard a crunch.

He nearly dislocated her jaw.

Her eyes were filled with tears that she quickly blinked away with evil, feeling how her eyelashes became wet, looking straight at him. Feeling his breath on her face.

She didn't understand what it was but she was full of something undefined. Full of everything at once — and completely empty at the same time. Because of him. Not because of what he was saying. The feeling, when she touched his body at least with the tip of the finger, gears began to spin inside her, which didn't move before.

The first, second, third... and they've already driven the blood so that it seemed that the vessel will burn now.

And it didn't matter that he could really kill her.

How is this _even_ possible?

She raced downstream, desperately trying to stop, but her legs just rested on the bubbling water that brought her deeper and deeper. Further.

"I swear," he hissed, bending forward to her, "I swear, you'll regret about it. If you. Don't forget."

Her heart was beating her ribs.

Listen what he said. _Listen_ , you idiot.

"Damn coward," she whispered through clenched teeth, feeling that Malfoy's fingers compressed harder. Pain. Again rush of tears. Again furious blinking. He watched her eyes with a grim pride.

"I can break your jaw," he said, "with _my own_ hands, Mudblood."

"Find something to be proud of."

"I hope you understood what I wanted to inform you."

"You wanted to inform me about nothing. Another ungrounded..."

"Fuck you," she almost sobbed when his hard fingers released her chin, and Malfoy walked down the corridor quickly, as if there wasn't any squabble.

For a second, he turned over his shoulder and said:

"I had the bad nightmares all night, Granger. So don't ever approach me."

And then he went away.

She stood and breathed heavily with opened mouth, looking at his back.

Freak.

Arrogant bastard.

She turned and ran to the class, realizing that she was late. And not understanding why she didn't care what surprised McGonagall was going to say. All her thoughts were focused on fucking Malfoy.

Get out of my head.

 _Get out._

GET OUT.

Blaze were sitting in a chair in front of the fireplace and reading the Daily Prophet when Malfoy came in. He just nodded, threw his bag on the table and fell on the couch gladly, looking at the stone Slytherin living room's ceiling. However, his tired eyes closed quickly, despite the fact that there was the middle of the day.

"We have guests. How are you, sir?"

"You don't have to stand up, Zabini. But I accept your laurels."

Blaise snorted, reaching for the basket with apples and choosing the biggest fruit. Malfoy turned his head, looking at him.

"Will you go to transfiguration's class?"

Zabini glanced at the watch.

"Yes. I'm waiting for Daph. I think we won't be late. We have another twenty minutes."

"Hmm."

Zabini glanced at him again.

"Will you go with us?"

"I don't know," Draco stretched himself with a crunch, putting his hands behind his head. Closing his eyes.

It was strange not to spend evenings here. Not to feel the coolness of the dungeons. Not to come down here every day. Even the native stone was beginning to seem cold and alien. To his own dismay, he realized that he was already used to prefects' tower. In fact, he almost didn't care where to live. It was important that the conditions were much better than in a small room with one bathroom for everyone. However, the realization that Slytherin living room was almost unusual for him pressed his ribs unpleasantly. As if he had betrayed. Everyone.

Blaise turned the page of the newspaper, biting off the green apple.

"Do you know how is it?"

"It?"

He raised his eyebrows questioningly, chewing and not looking aside from the Prophet.

Malfoy grinned. After his appointment as prefect, Blaise often made fun of him — at first. And then he just ignored any mention about it. Dumbledore had two candidates for head of boys' post but he chose Draco. And he guessed why.

It was idiotic attempt to pull him by the ears out of the shit that fell down on his head. But, probably, this post belonged to Zabini rightfully. But in his dark eyes there wasn't a shred of envy. Just a persistent concern. After all that had happened.

And Malfoy was thankful for the fact that his "advancement" didn't affect their friendship.

On one second, he thought about if Blaise would live with Granger. Somehow it seemed to him that they would be on good terms. Despite the arrogant Zabini's nature and Mudblood's tiresomeness. Yes, they would be on good terms definitely.

Malfoy didn't please this idea.

He shouldn't be on good terms with her. He should educate her. She's too pretentious. Damn egghead. Stubborn, proud, everywhere with her poisonous tongue.

She was always near.

He became to _notice her_ very often. Her stupid shaggy hair. Her fucking expressionless lips that had the taste of mint and cinnamon.

Fucking cinnamon.

He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes for a moment. Zabini's voice reminded him of the existence of the interlocutor.

"How is it - what?"

Ah, Yes. What he's talking about.

"To have your own bedroom. And living room."

"Ah," Zabini said, throwing a quick glance at Malfoy, "I thought you asked how is it to live with Granger. Have you already fucked her?"

 _Her moan. The movement of her body — to him. But he stood, feeling an irresistible urge to rub her with his pulsing dick._

Draco's face lost its carefree expression immediately. He raised himself on one elbow.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Zabini bit off the apple again. Slowly chewed.

"Come on, Draco. It was just friendly joke."

"Such crappy joke," Malfoy got a surprised look and added quickly: "I've almost barfed."

He frowned, lying back on the coach.

The silence in the living room began to stress.

"What's new going on here..."

"Oh. No, Malfoy... It can't be."

Zabini looked at him with a mixture of horror, surprise and ridicule. Draco stared at him with cold indifference.

" _What_ "no, Malfoy"?"

"You really fucked her?"

"Are you crazy?" Malfoy laughed, running his hands across the face and staring at the ceiling again, "What do you take me for? If I fuck everything that comes under my hand, it won't be me."

"But you fuck everything and..." Blaise stopped, having met with a cold stare, and turned back to the newspaper.

"I choose _the best one_. And I don't pick up what was lying on the floor, useless."

"Don't worry, Draco. I'm fooling. But your face was like..."

"Just... shut up, okay? I hate her. I came down here to relax. And not listen to your nonsense," his anger made him clench his fists, "She maddens me," Malfoy growled, "She's fucking mudblood idiot."

In the living room again fell silent. Blaise coughed. He ate his apple. Then he put down the newspaper and sat up straight, leaning his elbows on his knees.

"How is... Narcissa?"

"I don't know," Malfoy cut short.

"You're not interested?"

"Malfoy Manor is safe, and all this nonsense in the newspapers... it's a fucking waste of time, nobody would believe it."

"One family has disappeared, it stressed the Ministry."

"Damn, they think that deceased is guilty of this disappearance," Malfoy sat up abruptly, running his hands through his hair, "Is it normal?"

"It doesn't say that it was your father. It says about the accomplices."

"What the fuck, Zabini? Stop bothering me with such issues."

Blaise squeezed his lips.

Malfoy sighed heavily.

"Even if it's true. If some psycho decided to continue what my dad had started... my mother is in safe. After they erased her memory, she couldn't have some meaning even for Voldemort. All she knew..." Draco shook his head. He didn't want to raise this issue. Even in his own thoughts he did without the names of the parents.

He just didn't know _how_ to think about them.

How to think about his father who already dead?

Should he respect him for what he did for Draco? Or rather, for himself, of course. But for Draco it had considerable influence. Should he fear him as in life?

No. Malfoy was tired to fear. That's all changed. _HE_ had changed. He needed to make decisions himself.

No one else.

Lucius was dead. And Narcissa...

Draco remembered the empty eyes of his mother after Obliviate. Her uncertain smile, presented to his son, and a slight tilt of her head to the direction of a magician, sent by the Ministry, to erase her memory.

 _"Who is this young man, Mr. Thompson?"_

 _"He is your son, Narcissa," official was clearly embarrassed and didn't dare look up at the frozen Draco, who felt nothing at that moment. Even beats of his own heart._

 _He just looked at her, trying to recognize his own mother. But he couldn't._

 _It wasn't her._

 _As if she was broken. As if she was... toy. Funny replacement._

 _Falseness._

 _"Nice to meet you. I have a very handsome son," her smile was another's for Draco._

 _Such another's that something began to prick in his eyes and nose suddenly._

 _And then his heart stroke in his chest so hard that since then it became impossible for him to feel the pain. As if something shrank under his ribs and never unclench. He will never feel nothing..._

...Though, he didn't want to feel.

Except persistent contempt that flowed in his veins instead of blood. Except the anger against all the world that pricked under his skin with needles. All around was guilty that he was left alone. Completely alone.

But he didn't care.

"Okay, sorry," Zabini reached for the fruit basket, "Maybe, apple?"

Malfoy raised his head. A few seconds he was looking at his friend distantly. Then he nodded.

He caught the fruit that was threw for him and smiled, immersing his teeth in a crispy rind.

Anyway.

Hermione felt that the book on the top of the pile in her hands could fall on the floor.

 _Come on, just a little more. She was almost there._

She overcame the last step, when she realized that the potions' textbook was falling. She closed her eyes, waiting for the unstable pile will collapse in her hands, but nothing happened.

She opened one eye hesitantly and stared up at warm brown eyes with rays of wrinkles at their corners.

"Hi Hermione, the girls' prefect," white-toothed smile and roguish expression. Hair, tied in a short tail with a few unruly strands of hair falling on the forehead. He kept some of the books and the damn potions' textbook.

"Kurt!" Hermione laughed happily, "Thank you," she took the book back, "What are you doing here?"

"I was at the professor Flitwick's class," Miller removed most books from the pile, "Let me help you."

"Thank you," she tried to force herself to stop smiling, "I thought I'm going to fall with this pile right on the steps."

"Books don't listen to you lately, don't you think, Hermione?" he also smiled, his eyes were shining, "Well, I'm glad to act as your Book Savior. Where are you going?"

"This way," Hermione walked down the corridor leading to the portrait with Yellow lady. For some time, they were silent but it was quite friendly and bearable silence. It was nicely to be silent with him, exchanging glances with him from time to time.

"Do you have problems with spells?" she asked him, calling the password and let Kurt inside. He entered first, looking around with interest.

"Yeah..." he said, stopping and spinning around, "Wow, this is nice."

"I'm already used to this living room for two and a half weeks," she closed the door, pointing on the table with her free hand, "Put it over there, please."

After putting the books on the table, Miller began to turn around again.

"It looks like our living room, only smaller."

"Yes," Hermione hugged herself, also looking around and feeling herself suddenly insecure, "This is... also mini-living room. Small."

She squeezed her lips, frowning.

 _What are you talking about?_

"Sit down," she woke up, noticing that Kurt had finished the examination and now looking at her.

"It's comfortable in here," he said. He walked around the coach and sat down, taking a pillow and laying it aside.

Hermione sat down in the chair, folding her hands on her knees, desperately trying to think of a topic for conversation.

"So... what about you, with professor Flitwick?"

Miller frowned slightly. Then snorted suspiciously, covering his mouth as if trying to hide a snicker.

"We're just... teacher and student, thank Merlin," he said in a trembling voice. For some time, Hermione was looking at Kurt in surprise, and then she threw back her head and laughed.

While he was admiring her smile, she tried to calm down and in the end, blotting the corners of her eyes with fingertips, said:

"Sorry, I'm such an idiot."

"You're very cute when embarrassed," he said, "I was just joking. I won't do it anymore," he bent a little towards her and whispered conspiratorially: "I have some problems with the latest theme that we're studying."

"And what are you studying?" Hermione turned serious immediately, interlocking her hands before her.

"Water spells. I have... some problems with the pronunciation."

"Oh! There's nothing complicated!" Hermione's eyes lit up, "Water magic requires the special concentration because the liquid is not solid substance and..."

"Listen," he raised his hand, and she froze, interrupted in mid-sentence.

Damn. Well, now he'll stand and say that he is not interested. That she's a geek. She needs to apologize.

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to..."

"I would like to ask you to help me with this."

They said it almost simultaneously and froze.

"What are you apologizing for?"

"To help you with this?"

Again at the same time. And they laughed again.

"You first."

"No, you first. Why did you apologize?"

"When it comes to studying..." Hermione waved her hands vaguely, "I can take a great interest, and it's... not always interesting to listen to."

Kurt shook his head so the fiery rays of the fireplace danced on his dark hair. She remembered the blond hair that became golden in the light of the fire, and she scolded herself mentally.

"I like girls on whom I can rely."

"Oh... Do you think I'm that kind of girl?"

"You're good girl. I would be very grateful if you could help me."

Hermione nodded happily.

"We could meet in the library, for example," she suggested enthusiastically, "Maybe... tomorrow at four o'clock?"

"Perfectly. I have classes end at half past three," Miller clapped his hands, rubbing them, "Thank you."

"You can thank me tomorrow."

"So... I'll go?"

When she nodded again, he stood up, looking around and making a few steps toward the door.

"You're lucky."

"Really?" Hermione was in front of him.

"They say you have a separate bathroom," he said quietly like it was a terrible secret. The girl laughed, nodding.

"Yes. It's not so bad to have your own bedroom. Though ..."

The door opened before Hermione had time to touch it.

 _Oh, shit._

She squeezed her lips, immediately feeling her smile slid from her face. Malfoy was standing on the threshold.

Tall, blocking up the doorway with his broad shoulders, his hands were in his trousers' pockets. He was gorgeous as always.

For a second, it took her breath away but she forced herself to frown.

His platinum hair was falling over his forehead, his face lowered slightly. His eyes filled with anger. He looked at Kurt with cold glare. Then he looked at Hermione. She wanted to look aside. From his nasty, ironic and interrogative look. And his compressed jaw, almost to a crisp.

"Hello," apparently, Kurt didn't notice the ocean of resentment that had just hit them on their heads because he held Malfoy a hand with a smile.

"It's undesirable for guests to be here at this time," his voice was toneless as if he muttered his words that were addressed to _her_. He didn't even turn to Miller.

Kurt looked at Hermione with question. She easily took him by the hand, pushing to the door and forcing Malfoy to step aside a little.

"See you tomorrow," she forced herself to smile but her smile wasn't so sincere, like it was before.

Miller nodded and raised his eyes, looking at Draco over her head. Before the door closed, Kurt and Malfoy were stubbornly staring at each other.

A quiet click and Yellow lady closed with creak.

Hermione allowed herself to lean against the door with her forehead for a moment and then straightened her shoulders and turned to Malfoy who stood, looking at her and squeezing his lips. As if he demanded an explanation silently.

"Could you be more kindly with _guests_?" she said, tossing up her hands in impotent anger.

"What the fuck he was doing here?"

She felt uneasy from his tone.

"He helped me to bring the books."

"What books?"

"Those that are on the table."

He didn't even look to that direction. Instead of it, he looked at the cushion which was on the other side. Not where it usually was.

"You were fucking on the coach?" he threw it roughly, rocking from heel to toe and staring at her, "Did he get some splinters in his cock, miss fucking Piece of Wood?" he added mockingly, watching with enjoy how her cheeks became red.

"Stop these jokes, or I'll have to..."

"I'm not kidding."

"Malfoy. Don't be a jerk."

She passed around him and went to the table. She needed to prepare for the herbology test. And to put the books.

He watched her from the doorway, not looking up.

"Run, run. As usual, Mudblood."

"I'm not running."

"You can't be with me in the same room."

She heard a smirk in his deep voice, shifting the books from the table to the bookshelf.

"I don't care if you're here or not. In Hogwarts, in England, in this world..." Hermione shrugged her shoulders, "I'm running not from you. I need to study."

"Of course."

"I can do it here."

"Well, not really."

"Why?" Hermione turned to him, folding her hands on her chest, "Maybe, is it you can't be with me in the same room? And I'm "running as usual"."

"You're right," he said suddenly, "I have a splitting headache when you're around."

"Why. Am I. The reason of it?"

"The way you look. My eyes can't stand it."

She sighed as if she didn't expect the other answer. She turned away again, throwing her hair to one side, and he was watching her tense shoulders and vertebrae, protruding on her neck, when Mudblood bent her head. Her brittle bones attracted him. He wanted to touch them with his fingertips, feeling their soft, warm waves beneath the skin.

His consciousness tossed the feeling of delicate hands immediately, which he clutched yesterday, holding them in place. And then - her soft chin under his fingertips. He didn't need it in his head.

Draco looked away, clenching his teeth. Just let her go to her diggings. He didn't want to be like her, watching her until she didn't see it.

It was disgusting.

"Damn, hurry up."

"What's wrong?" she asked innocently, leaning over the table and looking for something in the drawer.

Her cloak outlined the line of her hips and rounded ass. Her thin, barely noticeable strip of the projecting spine.

 _To hold it by his hand, slightly bending and pushing on her neck..._

His jaw almost creaked.

"Fuck, you enrage me, Mudblood."

She turned to look over her shoulder, noticing his face expression and straightening herself up. Her thin eyebrows raised.

"Problems, Malfoy?"

She. She was the problem.

Draco came closer to Granger and felt how his upper lip strained, and there was some prickling under his skin from irritation.

"Get. Out."

Her hot look of brown eyes came into his icy eyes, melting the retina.

"No," her voice trembled, and he had to bend down to her, so her breath froze in her chest.

" _I'll destroy_ you."

Her breath out. He felt it on his tongue. Alarming bells in his head signaled that he'd better get out of here.

Mint flavor with a response of cinnamon. Malfoy rolled it on his tongue while she was stubbornly staring at him.

"Do you want to prove something to me?" his voice was thick and low, he didn't recognize it, only inhaling her scent greedily, which enveloped him from head to toe.

"I want to prove that it's just your weakness, not mine."

He laughed. It was too sharp and unreal sound.

"I have _no_ weaknesses, you fucking idiot."

Hermione lifted her long lashes and looked at his lips as if she was trying to measure the distance between them.

"So, why you're standing so close to me? _Again_."

She uttered the last word barely audible.

He looked at her Gryffindor tie, which was tightened around her neck, as if he hoped it would revive him again, and then he raised his eyes on her. Granger's lips were too close not to think about them.

Red and gold were lost in the cacophony of smells and sensations.

"Malfoy."

He knew: she'll say something that'll make him feel rage. Again the rage. But now, so close to her, he didn't feel it. Only the sudden desire to penetrate into her _dirty_ mouth. To move with his tongue into it. So tight, so moist. So responding. _To him_ , not to some fucking Kurt Miller. _To him_.

She'd dug her fingers into _his_ shoulders or buried in his hair. She'd nestled up to _him_ , feeling his cock-stand, that was already in his pants. From these thoughts. Just from thinking about how she's going to exhale in his mouth. And then she'll buckle. And he'll let her do it.

 _I'm fucking crazy._

 _I-want-Mudblood._

"You said that I must forgot about what has happened yesterday," her trembling voice. She was breathing noisily and deeply. Draco wanted she liked his smell.

He knew she loved it.

Her words penetrated in his brain. The anger came back for a moment.

"Do you think I'm going to kiss you? To spitted out my entrails?"

She clenched her teeth silently but said nothing.

"He's good, isn't he?"

"Who?"

"Miller."

"What are you talking about?"

"Damn, answer me. Is he good? Did he put his tongue into your dirty mouth? Or maybe into somewhere else?" he growled in her face.

Hermione looked confused at him, not understanding why he said those nasty things. Why he cared about it and why she invited Kurt to their living room of prefects.

And when the meaning of the words reached her, she whispered:

"You fucking asshole, don't you dare say such things about me."

"I forgot that you're frigid bitch..."

Her slim hands pushed him in the chest, and he took a step back, and she rushed to the stairs. His wild gray eyes caught her a second earlier before his fingers closed down on her thin elbow.

 _Why did you stop her?!_ His subconsciousness yelled.

And the same question was in her screaming and burning eyes as she turned her head to him, desperately breathing with her opened mouth.

I don't know. I don't know.

"... don't know."

It didn't mean anything.

Completely. He almost felt nothing.

She raised her head to him first again, he could swear. Of course, she did it first. He couldn't do it first.

Just...

Just his lips slammed into her with force. With all the force she aroused him with her small, wet, warm mouth, sliding a few inches from his lips and maddening, and driving him crazy — yesterday, today, always. Imperceptible and therefore hateful, desired, essential.

He felt she was trying to resist. She tried to avert her face. He didn't let her do it.

He was stronger.

It made Mudblood suffer, he knew it, pressing in her lips, hoping this pain will sober him and her up. But it didn't sober. It didn't sober, but aroused him more. Her lips were hot and so wrong-delicious.

He stopped almost with a groan. He raised his head, looking at her. In her eyes.

At her reaction that was immediately.

"No, Malfoy!" she snatched her arm out his fingers, opening her eyes in horror, intending to take a step back, but he abruptly pulled her back, squeezing her shoulders, feeling as his brains disconnected, "Let me go, stop it! Malfo..."

He kissed her again. He kissed her moving lips, closing his eyes and exhaling quietly, feeling the taste. Her taste.

He needed it. Because it was yesterday. He thought that it seemed to him — but no. Now again.

The demons shut up under his skin. They calmed down. And his heart beat in his chest with such force, as if it was about to burst. This beating was in the silence of his head and of the room. And he was kissing, licking, drinking it to the bottom, sucking her lower, then upper lip.

Since when such cruel kiss had become so comprehensive? It was something that blocked the air. It didn't allow him to let go her shoulders, trying to nestle up closer, or to recoil.

No, Granger. A little more.

 _Let-me-feel._

Draco didn't realize that her next movement wasn't a protest, until it repeated. Awkwardly, cautiously. How long she hadn't resisted? She moved her lips in response, easily caressing his mouth, making a hot wave swept back, and the hairs all over his body stood on end.

His kiss was returned. And again — this time revealing. Meeting her tongue and trying to suck it in himself.

He quietly growled and nestled up to her little body against his will, tearing, biting. Sucking. Without removing his hands from her shoulders which now he was pulling on himself, not allowing her to touch him.

Not to go crazy right here.

Although he had already gone crazy.

He caught her full lips with his teeth. He growled. He drew out with his tongue, barely restraining himself not to moan aloud from the sensations that provoked the cock-stand in his trousers.

Stop it. Enough.

Damn, he wanted it deeper.

Malfoy let go her shoulder and lifted his hand to her burning face. He presses down on her tiny chin with his thumb, not stopping kissing her, feeling how her lips opened obediently. He penetrated inside her with his tongue.

Deeply. Hot. Wetly.

Her strangled moan. She bent her back, nestling up to him.

 _Merlin._

If you don't stop squirming and rubbing up on me, I'll fuck you right here.

And in that moment, when Granger reached her released arm to bury in his hair, his own words flashed in his mind.

 _...I don't pick up what was lying on the floor, useless..._

These words appeared in his head suddenly and seemed so alien, that he felt fear. For a second Draco thought that these words were said by his father. And it caused him to raise his head sharply, opening his eyes.

Reality came down on him, choking.

Her brown, wide open eyes were looking straight at him. And she was shivering. With all her body.

"What..."

Her swollen lips, biting and covering with kisses almost with bruises, were trembling.

Malfoy pushed her away, taking a step back. She continued to look as if he just committed murder. The terror in her eyes was indescribable. He thought even for a moment that he was scared.

"What... the _fuck_? Why you didn't stop me?" his voice was hoarse and strange.

She was silent. She put her hand to her lips. Her stunned look made him to look confused.

He licked his lips, feeling her taste. He cursed.

Okay. It didn't matter. He needed a cold shower.

He abruptly turned and went to his bedroom, listening for footsteps. Feeling like his heart was beating and how it was narrowly in his pants.

Did it happen? Did he want it?

It had happened.

 _He wanted it._

His hands were shaking when he opened the door. His stomach tightened.

Malfoy barely arrived at the bathroom and bent over the toilet, groaning from a pressing pain in his pants, choking with air in his throat.

He wanted to spit Mudblood out of himself if it was possible. Out of himself. Out of his mind. Out of his head.

But there was only the air.

And her taste on his tongue.


End file.
